British researchers hope a new stem cell treatment will do something current treatments for heart disease can’t: heal heart muscle damaged during a heart attack.
The therapy will rely on stem cells taken from the patients’ own bone marrow and then injected directly into the damaged heart muscle during traditional bypass surgery.
“We hope that this exciting project will provide information taking us a step nearer to the day when stem cells can be used routinely to help repair damaged hearts,” Professor Jeremy Pearson, of the British Heart Foundation (BHF), was quoted as saying. The BHF is funding the study.
Repairing damaged heart muscle is a new direction in heart attack care, which now relies on bypass surgery or angioplasty to improve blood flow in people with heart disease or heart attacks. But these procedures don’t do anything to compensate for the scarring that occurs in the damaged muscle. Scarring compromises the heart’s ability to pump blood, and severe damage can even lead to the development of congestive heart failure.
If the stem cell treatment works the way the investigators hope it will — by actually regenerating the damaged heart muscle — it could be a major advance in heart disease care.
The investigation will take place at the University of Bristol and will involve patients who receive either the stem cells or a placebo during bypass surgery. Neither patients nor physicians will know which patients got which treatment, a tactic researchers say will make the results more valid.
“Current treatments aim to keep the patient alive with a heart that is working less efficiently than before the heart attack,” researcher Raimondo Ascione, M.D., was quoted as saying. “Cardiac stem cell therapy aims to repair the damaged heart as it has the potential to replace the damaged tissue.”
SOURCE: University of Bristol