Picture of Dr JC Han
Congratulations to Dr JC Han (PI), Dr Kim Mellor, Dr Rohit Ramchandra and Dr Kenneth Tran from the Department of Physiology for receiving a Marsden grant! Their project is titled ‘What makes the heart fail when it beats like a metronome?’.
A heart rate of, for example, 60 beats per minute does not mean the heart beats precisely once per second, like a metronome. For over 250 years, it has been common knowledge in the medical community that there exists variation in time between consecutive heartbeats (coined ‘heart rate variability).
This is a natural phenomenon, in synchrony with breathing, signifying health and reflecting an individual’s resilience and flexibility to adapt to physiological challenges. However, the physiological basis for this phenomenon remains elusive. The project aims to understand the physiological effects of the absence and the presence of variable inter‑beats on the heart.
The team includes diverse expertise from the Auckland Bioengineering Institute and the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, and will implement a novel approach that integrates state-of-the-art bioinstrumentation, functional (mechanoenergetics) and molecular experimentation, and computational modelling. This study is topical and relevant, given the strong association between declining inter‑beat variability and the development of heart disease.