Dietary enrichment of BCAA ameliorates cardiac metabolism and function in failing heart

Here we show that a specific diet in which dietary protein content has been replaced with a defined-amino acid formula enriched with BCAA, has a remarkable effect in treating heart failure (HF). In particular, we demonstrate that our dietary intervention has a theraputic relevance in the setting of preestablished disease, providing a critical rationale for further development of dietary interventions for HF. Eight-week-old male C57BL/6N mice were fed with either a low fat diet (SFA) or a diet in which casein was almost completely (93.5 %) replaced by free essential amino acids (SFA-EAA) and were subjected to transverse aortic constriction (TAC) to induce left ventricle (LV) pressure overload. 4 weeks after sham or TAC surgery, total RNA was extracted from the LV of mice fed the SFA or SFA-EAA diet.