Your own stem cells can repair damaged heart

LONDON: Scientists have found that infusion of heart's own stem cells can repair the damage caused to the organ following an attack , a find they say could lead to new treatment strategy for cardiac regeneration.

The study, published in the Lancet, showed that the cells help the organ re-grow healthy muscle after a heart attack, challenging the belief that cardiac scarring is permanent and that once lost, healthy heart muscle cannot be restored.

In the research, a team led by Eduardo Marban at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angelesassessed a group of 25 patients, with an average age of
53 years, each of whom had suffered a heart attack.

Patients were treated at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute and at Johns Hopkins Hospital inBaltimore. Of these, eight received standard care while 17 received infusions of cardiospherederived stem cells (CDCs) that were created using the patient's own heart tissue.

The procedure was less invasive and involved removing pieces of living heart muscle around half the size of a raisin using a catheter under local anaesthetic ; this tissue was then used to create the supply of cardiac stem cells.

Each patient then received an infusion of around 12 to 25 million of his or her own stem cells.

Patients who had the stem cell infusion saw their scar size drop from 24% to 12% of the heart on average, while control group saw no reduction in scar size.

"This discovery challenges the conventional wisdom that, once established, cardiac scarring is permanent and that, once lost, healthy heart muscle cannot be restored," said the researchers .