On average, one in four people who have a heart attack sustain long-lasting damage to the mitral valve, which has the important job of making sure blood pumps through the heart’s ventricles in the right direction. If the valve is damaged, the heart’s pumping efficiency is reduced and blood can flow backward, which can lead to heart failure and death.

Now, a team of collaborators from Boston Children’s Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital has shown, for the first time, that it’s possible to treat and even prevent mitral valve damage after heart attack with an FDA-approved, anti-hypertension drug called losartan. Their findings are published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. …