By Alabama Public Radio
Birmingham, AL – UAB has won a five-year, $18 million federal grant to study congestive heart failure in humans and dogs. The research award is one of the larger in UAB's history. It's one of only five institutions nationwide--and the only one in the Southeast--to receive the grant. The research under the grant will focus on three types of congestive heart failure. Those three types account for more than half of heart failure patients and are especially difficult to treat using standard therapies. Researchers want to understand the mechanisms that cause the heart to enlarge in each type of heart failure. The lead researcher for the project says that once the causes are explained, researchers can target drug therapies to try to block or delay the reaction.