A research team at the University of Arizona College of Medicine--Tucson's Sarver Heart Center found that a subset of artificial heart patients can regenerate heart muscle, which opens the possibilities of new ways to treat and perhaps someday cure heart failure.
Washington [USA], December 30 (ANI): A research team at the
University of Arizona College of Medicine--Tucson's Sarver Heart Center found
that a subset of artificial heart patients can regenerate heart muscle, which
opens the possibilities of new ways to treat and perhaps someday cure heart
failure.
The results of the research which was co-led by a
physician-scientist were published in the journal Circulation.
Comparing the repair of skeletal muscles to heart muscles, Hesham
Sadek, MD, PhD, director of the Sarver Heart Center and chief of the Division
of Cardiology at the University of Arizona College of Medicine -- Tucson's
Department of Medicine said that when a heart muscle doesn't grow back if it
gets injured, "We have nothing to reverse heart muscle loss."
Sadek led a collaboration between international experts to
investigate whether heart muscles can regenerate. The study was funded through
a grant by the Leducq Foundation Transatlantic Networks of Excellence Program.
The project began with tissue from artificial heart patients
provided by colleagues at the University of Utah Health and School of Medicine
led by Stavros Drakos, MD, PhD, a pioneer in left ventricular assist
device-mediated recovery.
Jonas Frisen, MD, PhD, and Olaf Bergmann, MD, PhD, of the
Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, led teams in Sweden and Germany and used
their innovative method of carbon dating human heart tissue to track whether
these samples contained newly generated cells.
The investigators found that patients with artificial hearts
regenerated muscle cells at more than six times the rate of healthy hearts.
"This is the strongest evidence we have, so far, that human
heart muscle cells can actually regenerate, which really is exciting, because
it solidifies the notion that there is an intrinsic capacity of the human heart
to regenerate," Sadek said.
Earlier, Sadek published a paper in Science showing that while
heart muscle cells actively divide in utero, they stop dividing shortly after
birth to devote their energy to pumping blood through the body nonstop, with no
time for breaks.
In 2014, he published evidence of cell division in patients with
artificial hearts, hinting that their heart muscle cells might have been
regenerating.
"The pump pushes blood into the aorta, bypassing the
heart," he said. "The heart is essentially resting."
Sadek's previous studies indicated that this rest might be
beneficial for the heart muscle cells, but he needed to design an experiment to
determine whether patients with artificial hearts were actually regenerating
muscles.
"Irrefutable evidence of heart muscle regeneration has never
been shown before in humans," he said. "This study provided direct
evidence."
However, Sadek wants to figure out why only 25 per cent of
patients responded to the regeneration of the muscle.
"It's not clear why some patients respond and some don't, but
it's very clear that the ones who respond have the ability to regenerate heart
muscle," he wrote.
Sadek believes that in future a mechanical heart will not be a
therapy on which people will rely and with this study, he hopes to deliver
regenation of heart muscles in future. (ANI).
No comments:
Post a Comment