felder.lab.uiowa.edu

Welcome to the Felder Lab

The sympathetic nervous system is overactive in heart failure, and contributes to morbidity and mortality by promoting fluid accumulation, vasoconstriction, cardiac remodeling and serious ventricular arrhythmias. The Felder Laboratory studies the central nervous system mechanisms that activate the sympathetic nervous system in a rat model of heart failure that simulates human heart failure that develops after a myocardial infarction. We are particularly interested in the effects on the brain of humoral factors that increase in the circulation in heart failure as a result of activation of the immune system (i.e., pro-inflammatory cytokines) and of systems that attempt to compensate for the reduced pumping function of the failing heart (i.e., the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system). Our molecular, immunohistochemical and electrophysiological and hemodynamic recording studies examine the effects of these humoral factors on the neurochemical milieu in central nervous system regions (in particular, the subfornical organ and the hypothalamic paraventricular nucleus) that regulate sympathetic nerve activity. The overall goal is to identify central nervous system mechanisms that might become the targets of therapeutic interventions to reduce sympathetic activity in this devastating disease.