Cardiac cells 'heal heart damage'

Stem cells taken from a patient's own heart have, for the first time, been used to repair damaged heart tissue, researchers claim.

The study,published in the Lancet, was designed to test the procedure's safety, but also reported improvements in the heart's ability to pump blood.

The authors said the findings were "very encouraging"

Other experts said techniques with bone marrow stem cells were more advanced and that bigger trials were needed.

The scientists say this is the first reported case of cardiac stem cells being used as a treatment in people after earlier studies had shown benefits in animals.

Improvement

The preliminary trial was on patients with heart failure who were having heart bypass surgery. During the operation, a piece of heart tissue, from the right atrial appendage, was taken.

While the patient was being sewn up, researchers isolated cardiac stem cells from the sample and cultured them until they had about two million stem cells for each patient. The cells were injected about 100 days later.

Doctors measured how efficiently the heart was pumping using the left ventricle ejection fraction - what percentage of blood was leaving one of the heart's main chamber with every beat........

......The heart is not the only source of potentially useful stem cells. Trials have already taken place using stems cells from bone marrow.

Prof Anthony Mathur, from Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry, and Prof John Martin, from University College London, are already conducting large randomised clinical trials.

They are investigating the effect of giving patients stem cells from their own bone marrow, in NHS hospitals, within six hours of a heart attack......

Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-15693507

Source: BBC Health News