American Heart Association volunteer expert on HCM, James E. Udelson, M.D., is Chief, Division of Cardiology; Director, Nuclear Cardiology Laboratory; professor, Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts.

Offering perspective on AHA Scientific Sessions 2020 Presentation P1732 
copyright American Heart Association 2020

"Mavacampten affects the contractile properties of the myocytes, the heart muscle cells, by working at the place where the contraction actually occurs, and by doing so, it, it depresses the contractility or the force of contraction of the heart, and in the kind of patients that they studied here with what's called obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, where the abnormal thickening is getting in the way of the blood flowing out of the heart. By depressing the contractility, it opens up what's called the outflow track. So blood can more easily be ejected from the heart with a smaller degree of obstruction."