Fluctuations in bioelectrical signals from the heart could open the way for early detection of afflictions such as arrhythmia, taking preventive medicine to a new dimension.

As head of the Bioelectric and Bioenergetics Systems Laboratory, Asst. Prof. Yael Yaniv concentrates on how changing amounts of energy produced by heart cells and the function of other internal mechanisms affect electrical activity in the heart. “I am looking at the internal mechanisms that affect electrical activity and induce abnormalities in heart function,” she states. A new member of the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering, Prof. Yaniv’s first breakthrough is the development of a mobile device for early detection of arrhythmia that enables affordable, user-friendly, real-time monitoring from a distance.

Cardiac arrhythmia (also known as irregular heart beat) occurs when the electrical impulses that coordinate heartbeats do not work properly, causing the heart to beat either too fast or too slowly. Although many arrhythmias are not life threatening, some can cause serious impairment of cardiac function and even a stroke – heart disease is one of the most common causes of death in Western countries.

“It is known that a normal heart rate is not constant but changes on a beat-to-beat basis,” she relates. “When a person’s heart rate variability becomes constant, we know that this is a signal that arrhythmia will occur shortly afterwards.”

Today, if a physician wants to measure a patient’s heart rate over time, he or she needs to have the patient hospitalized and hooked up to an EKG for 24 hours. The data generated is then sent to a technician and processed. It is expensive and takes a long time to get results.

The device that Yaniv has built enables monitoring the patient from anywhere – home, work, or even remote areas. Data is fed to a chip for analysis. The results are available within a few minutes and sent to a mobile device or an iPad. Yaniv’s lab has developed an App for both patients and their physicians. Both will get an alert that arrhythmia is about to occur in approximately the next five minutes. The patient can then rest in order to try to prevent arrhythmia.
“The device will give physicians the ability to monitor at-risk populations 24/7,” Yaniv explains.

“I found that calcium and phosphate signal levels control the amount of variability of the heart rate,” she explains. “If there is too little calcium and phosphate, then there is a lot of variability leading to arrhythmia and a very slow heart rate. If there is too much calcium and phosphate – this can increase heart rate.”

Yaniv has had a breakthrough in understanding the molecular mechanisms in the heart’s pacemaker that controls variability in the heart rate in vivo. Calcium and phosphate signal levels are regulated by an internal mechanism in the heart’s pacemaker.

Support for Yaniv’s research comes from Ilene and Steve Berger, and two Technion grants – the Mallat Family Research Fund and the Karbeling Biomedical Engineering Research Fund – which helped her to attract four additional external research grants