When you head to the grocery store, you probably aren’t accustomed to buying pomegranates off the store shelf.

Even though these bumpy red fruits are all over grocery stores in the U.S., most people are more familiar with the juice than they are with the fruit.

Either way, our bodies can produce a compound after eating foods such as pomegranates that may eventually help researchers develop a new treatment for a common, difficult-to-manage type of heart failure.

Discover Why this Heart Issue Is Hard to Treat and How Pomegranates Help

When we eat pomegranates, our bodies make a compound called urolithin A.

In a new study, researchers at King’s College London found that it helped heart muscle relax more effectively and reduced some of the harmful changes associated with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, or HFpEF.

Granted, the research is still early.

The benefits were seen in animal models and engineered human heart tissue, not in people with heart failure.

HFpEF accounts for roughly half of heart failure cases.

The name can be confusing because the heart may still squeeze out a normal percentage of blood.

The problem happens partly between beats.

A healthy heart has to relax so its chambers can fill with blood again. With HFpEF, the heart muscle becomes stiffer and has trouble relaxing and filling normally. People may experience shortness of breath, fatigue, and trouble exercising. Everyday activities can become harder.

HFpEF is also complicated because there isn’t one single cause. Aging, high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, and other health problems can all play a role. Treatment has improved, but managing the condition can still be difficult, particularly because patients may have several related medical problems at once.

Now Here’s Where Pomegranates Come In

Researchers studied a protein called PKGIα, which helps blood vessels and heart muscle relax.

They found that urolithin A could activate this pathway in a previously unrecognized way.

Urolithin A is produced after gut bacteria process compounds found in foods including pomegranates, walnuts, and certain berries. Researchers have already been interested in it because of its possible effects on cellular energy production and healthy aging.

In this study, the cardiovascular effects were striking.

Animals treated with urolithin A showed improvements of up to 80% in some heart-function measurements compared with untreated models. Researchers also saw less fibrosis, or scar tissue, and less abnormal enlargement of heart muscle cells.

Then they tested the compound in engineered heart tissue made from human stem cells. The tissue relaxed more effectively after treatment, adding more evidence that the pathway could matter in human heart disease.

What This Means For Patients Right Now

It does not mean eating more pomegranates will treat heart failure. Too bad, right?

There’s no clinical evidence yet showing that pomegranates, pomegranate juice, or urolithin A supplements can improve HFpEF in people.

Someone with heart failure shouldn’t replace prescribed medications or other medical care with any of them.

The more interesting finding may be the biological pathway itself. Researchers have identified a new way of helping heart muscle relax, and urolithin A appears capable of activating it.

That could eventually lead to a medication based on urolithin A, another compound that works through the same pathway, or perhaps a nutritional approach that complements existing treatment. Human trials will have to sort that out.

One encouraging piece of the puzzle is that urolithin A has already been studied in people for other purposes and has shown a generally favorable safety profile. That may make it somewhat easier to move this research toward clinical testing.

For people living with HFpEF, though, this isn’t a new treatment yet. It’s a lead.

And with a condition that remains frustratingly difficult to manage for many patients, a genuinely new lead is worth following.