Hormone Relaxine helps treat heart failure: study

Relaxine, a naturally occurring hormone that helps women adapt to pregnancy, is showing promise as a treatment for acute heart failure, a new study has found. The research, conducted by scientists from the United States and Italy and presented Sunday at an annual conference of the American College of Cardiology, said the hormone helped patients to breathe more easily. Given in addition to standard treatment, the hormone relaxin also reduced hospital time for patients and prevented heart failure from worsening during hospitalization, the study said. The hormone substantially relieved shortness of breath, or dyspnea, within just a few hours, an improvement that persisted over several days, the authors pointed out. - Physorg.com