Heart failure: a scenario of altered systemic homeostasis

Chronic heart failure starts as organ disease, in which the prime mover is heart contractile dysfunction, and becomes a systemic disease in its evolution. Systemic derangement characterized by continuous neuroendocrine and inflammatory activation has relevant phatophysiological, clinical and prognostic implications. Importantly, the activation of these systems is adaptive initially in response to hemodynamic changes and fluid overload induced by cardiac insufficiency. Thereafter the continuous activation becomes maladaptive and  dangerous for the heart and peripheral organs, as documented by the induction of calcium overload and apoptosis and stimulation of myocardial fibrosis, all factors participating to the progression of the disease. For this reason, in the pathophysiology of chronic stress stimuli, heart failure can be seen in a unique scenario of altered systemic homeostasis, in which heart dysfunction, peripheral organ dysfunction and derangement of the neuroendocrine and immune systems represent chronic stress stimuli, with continuous activation of the stress response. This, in turn, predisposes to allostatic load, that is the price the body pays for being continuously forced to adapt to adverse physical and pathophysiological conditions.

To reflect on these developments, the BMDJ Editorial Board announces this call for data papers and datasets on HEart FAilure and STress Response (HEFAST).

The HEFAST special issue will cover datasets on:

• Patients with chronic ischemic and non-ischemic heart failure
• Patients with isolated diastolic heart failure
• Patients with reversible cardiac dysfunction
• Experimental in vivo and ex vivo models of heart failure.

Of particular interest are original works on:

• New markers of stress response activation in heart failure
• Integrated evaluation of stress response activation in heart failure: 1) Caotic and fractal analysis, as integrated response of stress stimuli in heartfailure; 2) Clinical and prognostic implication of the stress response activation.
• Multifactorial analysis to assess in an integrated way clinical and prognostic impact of different cardiac, biohumoral and peripheral organ function/dysfunction
• Pharmacological and non-pharmacological modulation of the stress response activation
• Molecular, epigenetic, genetic and metabolic factors associated with stress response stimuli.

Interested contributors are invited to submit their datasets and manuscripts, prepared according to BMDJ Submission Guidance (where you can download the BMDJ template for a Data Paper). For further details, please visit the BMDJ website at http://www.biomed-data.eu.

Once accepted and prepared in its final camera ready version, your paper will be openly accessible in the ‘Preview’ section of the website, thus providing for a quick impact and recognition of the authors.

Anticipated publication of the full issue: September 2015