Over three years from 2021, Hynds Foundation supported Dr Jesse Ashton and his research team to improve diagnosis and treatment in costly cardiac diseases such as Atrial Fibrillation (AF) and heart failure. We are proud for Jesse and his team that the research was published in the Journal of Physiology in 2024.
Based in the University of Auckland’s Auckland Bio-Engineering Institute (ABI), Jesse played a leading role in the collaboration between the ABI and the University’s School of Medicine, working at the interface of cardiology and the nervous system, and using engineering, physiology and advanced imaging techniques to better understand the cardiac system.
Jesse and his research team have improved our understanding of AF using image-based computer models, experimental studies and a novel high-throughput microscope system. And in the first study of its kind, the team examined whether focused stimulation in the brain could activate a targeted subset of the nerve fibres contained in compound cardiac nerves, as a potential alternative treatment for AF and cardiac diseases.
Outcomes
The work has demonstrated for the first time that the neural “wiring” of human atrial ganglionated plexus (GPs) that control heart rate is altered in patients with atrial fibrillation in ways that increase the excitability of these networks.
This “remodelling” of atrial GPs increases the risk of atrial fibrillation and to progression of this heart rhythm disturbance.
This raises the possibility of new treatments for atrial fibrillation which target and reverse these mechanisms.
Pictured right: Dr Jesse Ashton
