Letter by Fragasso et al Regarding Article by Tuunanen et al, “Free Fatty Acid Depletion Acutely Decreases Cardiac Work and Efficiency in Cardiomyopathic Heart Failure”

Abstract

To the Editor: We read with interest the study by Tuunanen et al,1 which showed that acutely decreased serum free fatty acids (FFA) in patients with failing hearts further depress cardiac work. The authors, although considering these findings as unexpected, conclude that their results “argue against the important hypothesis that switching substrate metabolism acutely from FFA to glucose may be beneficial for the failing heart.” We think that such a “hard” conclusion cannot be drawn from their results. A situation similar to …