Around 64 million people worldwide suffer from heart failure, and nearly half die within the first five years of diagnosis due to a lack of effective treatments to stop the disease from getting worse.

Heart failure occurs when the heart’s ability to pump blood drops to less than 40%. Most available treatments tend to focus on reducing the effort necessary for the heart to pump blood, rather than tackling the underlying causes of the disease. This is mostly because researchers still don’t know what causes heart failure and what makes it worsen with time.

Turns out the immune system, the body’s protection against infection and disease, may be responsible for worsening........

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