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How Is Biological Clock Lined To Heart Attack?
 

As defined by the American Heritage Medical Dictionary, biological clock is an innate mechanism in living organisms that controls the periodicity or rhythm of various physiological functions or activities.

From the perspectives of scientists, biological clock is used to describe the timing that controls biological rhythms. For animals, the brain controls biological clock, but for plants and other living things without brains, it could be something else.

Biological rhythms, such as opening and closing of flowers, do happen for all living organisms. However, some rhythms like beating of heart occur every second while other rhythms are based on months, seasons or years.

The biological clocks found in human beings control the daily rhythms. Body temperature, blood pressure, sleeping and waking up have a 24-hour rhythm, and many illnesses have a yearly rhythm. For instance, colds and flus often happen in winter while measles occur mostly during the spring and summer.

Researchers in the United States declared that they had found the first molecular proof that the biological clock is linked to a type of sudden, fatal heart attack. Their findings were published in the journal ‘Nature’ on February 22, 2012.

Sudden cardiac death kills 100,000 people a year in the United Kingdom and it is a leading cause of death in the United States, taking an estimated 325,000 lives each year.

Ventricular arrhythmia (abnormal heartbeat), which occurs most frequently after waking up in the morning and to a lesser degree in the evening hours, can cause a high number of mortality. The researchers uncovered the first molecular link between this risk and circadian rhythm.

Circadian rhythms are physical, mental and behavioral changes that follow a roughly 24-hour cycle. The biological clocks that control circadian rhythms are groupings of interacting molecules in cells throughout the body. A “master clock” in the brain coordinates all the body clocks to ensure they are in sync.

The focus of the new findings was on the levels of a protein known as K2f15 (kruppel-like factor 15), which can influence ion channels that control heartbeat. In previous studies, K2f15 was found to be a circadian controller that was lacked among some patients with heart failure.

In laboratory, the research team created mice that had been genetically engineered to either lack K1f15 or have it excessively. These mice were found to have a much higher risk of arrhythmias compared to normal counterparts.

K1f15 controls another protein, KChIP2, which affects potassium-generated electrical current that flows though heart muscle cells called cardiac myocytes. When levels of KChIP2 fluctuate, electrical instability in the myocytes occurs.

Such instability would affect the heart muscle's action and it takes longer (or conversely, less time) to empty the ventricle (the heart's pumping chamber). The heartbeat becomes irregular and the heart fails to pump blood efficiently.

Klf15 is only one step in a complex molecular cascade, according to the researchers, who believed that further study should be carried out to discover other circadian-related causes. Nevertheless, the discovery has already opened up paths of research, in identifying individuals at risk of sudden death, finding and inventing drugs to reset the molecular clock.

Some cardiac experts felt that the findings could help target the most vulnerable stage by locating or devising medicines such as slow-release blood pressure drugs, which become active first thing in the morning when the risk is highest.

Interestingly, the concept of biological clock was obvious to ancient Chinese doctors, who called it the hour clock. They observed which meridians and organs were active and full of Qi (energy) at what times of day and night. For instance, between 9 and 11 am, the heart should be strongest with abundant Qi but it is weakest for people with chronic heart failure. This also explains why most people suffer a heart attack during such period of time.

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