Carotid body deactivation is emerging as a potential therapeutic target for sympathetically mediated diseases such as hypertension and heart failure, supported by preclinical data and early human feasibility studies.
Carotid body deactivation may benefit animal models of hypertension and heart failure; leaves open translation to human sympathetic disease management.
From the physiological point of view, carotid bodies are mainly responsible for the ventilatory response to hypoxia; however, they also take part in the regulation of sympathetic tone. According to preclinical data, these structures likely contribute to the development and progression of sympathetically mediated diseases. Moreover, carotid body deactivation in animal models improved blood pressure control in hypertension and reduced mortality in heart failure, along with reducing sympathetic activity. On this basis, two first-in-man studies have been recently performed to investigate the safety and feasibility of such an approach in humans. In this review we summarise the current knowledge regarding the function of carotid bodies, the prevalence of their abnormalities, and the consequences of their excision in human hypertension and heart failure.
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Tubek et al. (2018) studied this question.
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