Magnesium can treat diastolic heart failure, finds JCI Insight Study

"We've found that cardiac mitochondrial oxidative stress can cause diastolic dysfunction (DD). Since magnesium is an essential element for mitochondrial function, we decided to try the supplement as a treatment," explained Dudley. "It eliminated the poor heart relaxation that causes diastolic heart failure."

Patients with diastolic heart failure have high morbidity, mortality, and healthcare costs. Patients with this condition have similar annual mortality to patients with systolic heart failure, and up until now, there were no known specific treatments for this type of heart failure.

"This is an exciting step forward in the cardiovascular field," said Dudley, "Right now there are no specific treatments for patients with diastolic heart failure, but now we have a theory of why diastolic heart failure occurs and what we can do to get rid of it."

"High-fat diet (HFD)-induced diabetes mellitus (DM) was associated with hypomagnesemia, cardiac oxidative stress, disrupted mitochondrial function and morphology, cardiac hypertrophy, and DD. Mg supplementation improved all of these parameters," write the authors.

"Our findings demonstrate that DM induced mitochondrial dysfunction and caused cardiac diastolic dysfunction. Mg improved the mitochondrial changes and reversed the DD. Therefore, dietary Mg supplementation may be an inexpensive therapy for DD and subsequent heart failure with preserved ejection fraction," they conclude.

The next step is human trials. Dudley says this work could also open doors for answers for a related condition, atrial fibrillation.