Blood flow in legs may help predict heart disease: U of T study

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Tired legs and difficulty exercising may reveal serious health problems with your heart — before you even know it.

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According to a University of Toronto study, testing the blood flow in leg muscles may be a better way to diagnose cardiovascular disease.

Researchers at the university’s Institute of Biomedical Engineering say earlier signs of stiffening or scarring of heart tissue can be found elsewhere in the body despite the advances in medical imaging to diagnose heart-specific issues.

The study’s authors say previous research shows poor blood flow in leg muscles may occur before similar changes in the heart.

The condition, called heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpPE), is on the rise and affects millions of people worldwide. It accounts for more than half of all heart failure cases.

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There are few symptoms to alert doctors before it becomes serious and tough to treat.

“Our study shines a light on an important gap in how we detect HFpEF before the heart becomes irreversibly damaged,” senior study researcher Hai-Ling Margaret Cheng, a professor at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering, told U of T News recently.

“Our work suggests that vascular changes in leg muscle could serve as an earlier, more accessible warning sign of the disease.”

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The study, published in the journal Discover Medicine, tested male and female rats with diabetes-induced HFpEF. A special MRI was used to track how blood vessels respond to stress in the legs and heart.

The research team found, among the diabetic rats, the blood flow was showing problems in the leg muscles months before similar issues were detected in the heart.

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The results suggested testing the leg muscles for HFpEF was a better location on the body to catch the disease at its earlier stage.

“Our results show that by looking at blood flow in the legs, we could detect problems much sooner than we would by focusing only on the heart,” said the study’s lead researcher Sadi Loai, who has a PhD in biomedical engineering at the university.

“This could make a big difference in how we diagnose and treat this condition.”

Cheng said the next phase of the research into the disease is to study humans.

“Our ultimate goal is not only to open a door to early diagnosis when this disease may be treatable, but also to offer a new direction in treating a condition that is growing in prevalence and has become the most common form of heart failure.”

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