Functional foods for the prevention of chronic heart failure: what we should know?

Chronic heart failure (CHF) is a complex and worldwide disease with no cure. The increasing use of drugs and medical devices has improved the survival and quality of life of patients with CHF, but the prognosis still remains unfavorable. Despite incessant research on regenerating therapy of infarcted adult heart, to date there are no approaches to prevent its onset. The development of innovative strategies to halt the myocardial remodeling process is still a desirable achievement. Emerging evidences suggest that the continuous dietary intake of selected bioactive elements with antioxidant properties may increase the cardiomyocytes survival to hostile microenvironment and the angiogenic ability of coronary endothelial cells. Some of the beneficial effects of dietary antioxidants against myocardial functional decay are mediated via the epigenetic activation of gene expression in adult cardiac cells. In this context, functional foods of plant origin are seen as rich and natural source of active epigenetic compounds for enhancing myocardial resistance to ischemic microenvironment and promoting cardiomyocytes proliferation. Much remains to be elucidated; however, the cadioprotection due to regular consumption of functional foods in exploratory clinical studies indicate that this promising approach is worthy of further pursuit.