Heart News
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STEM CELL SUCCESS AS THE HEARTS OF CARDIAC VICTIMS ARE ‘REBUILT’Cardiac patients’ hearts have been ‘regenerated’ for the first time using a revolutionary stem cell treatment, it was revealed recently. The advance was hailed as convincing evidence that such cells can transform treatment of one of the biggest killer diseases. In the trial, doctors successfully used cells taken from patients’ own bone marrow to form healthy new heart muscle and blood vessels. Stem cells are the body’s ‘building blocks’ from which embryos grow in the womb. But they are also found in adult bone marrow and scientists have now demonstrated that stem cell therapy works in heart patients. Professor Roberts Kormos, who led the research at the University of Pittsburg, said: ‘These results encourage us to aggressively pursue cellular therapies as an option for congestive heart failure. It will revolutionise our approach, which is largely palliative, to one that is truly regenerative’. In Britain, an estimated 650,000 people suffer from severe congestive heart failure – which occurs when damaged heart muscle is unable to pump blood efficiently. Professor Kromos’s team compared two groups of patients given heart bypass operations, one of which was also treated with stem cells during surgery. The treatment was found to be more than twice as effective as bypass surgery alone, a scientific conference heard recently. Six months after their operations, the hearts of the stem cell group were significantly stronger and pumped out more blood that those of patients who had only had bypass surgery. Dr Amid Patel, who presented the findings to the American Association for Thoracic Surgery in Toronto said: ‘Stem cell transplantation led to a significant improvement in cardiac function in those patients undergoing bypass surgery’. The study focused on a group of patients with congestive heart failure. Their conditions were characterised by poor ‘ejection fraction’ – a measure of heart performance determined by the amount of blood pumped out at each beat. A healthy heart has an ejection fraction of at least 55 per cent. All the patients’ studied had ejection fractions of less than 35 per cent. They were all given bypass surgery, with half the group also getting stem cell treatment. Subsequent checks showed ejection fraction rates for the stem cell patients had increased from an average of 29 per cent to 46 per cent. In the surgery-only group, it had risen from 30 per cent to 37 per cent. Stem cell treatment also led to a noticeable increase in levels of a protein marker that is typically reduced in heart failure patients. Belinda Linden, head of medical information for the British Heart Foundation, said ‘This small but important study offers yet more evidence of the potential benefits of stem cells when injected into damaged heart tissue. Most current treatments are aimed at relieving the symptoms; if we can actually repair the heart itself this will be a significant advancement’. |
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