PRKAB1 and cardiac hypertrophy: However, the role of AMPK in cardiac health is pleiotropic – AMPK hyperactivation can also induce cardiac hypertrophy in mice and humans (Myers et al., 2017; Arad et al., 2003; Li et al., 2019; Kim et al., 2014) – and it has a complex involvement in pulmonary hypertension (Zhao et al., 2021), as both inhibition and activation of AMPK in the lung can be protective.