COMMENTARY | I am willing to bet most people know someone with a damaged heart. I can name two people in my immediate family, but do not have enough fingers and toes to count up all the friends, coworkers and acquaintances who have suffered mild or major heart attacks over the years. The odds are you know several sufferers yourself. In fact, millions of people suffer from heart disease. It is the leading cause of death for Americans.
Re-grow damaged heart tissue
A heart attack causes a piece of the heart tissue to die from lack of blood flow. The scar tissue is all that remains and the person has to deal with the damage. Now, in a ground-breaking study, researchers from the Cedar-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles have discovered a way to re-grow damaged heart muscle.
Stem cell therapy Dr. Eduardo Marban and his team tested stem cell therapy with great results. Out of 17 patients, there was an average reduction of scar tissue by 50 percent. These patients also saw new growth in their heart muscle. Now that is not a total reversal, but for tissue that was presumed lost forever, this is big news.
Marban said, "One of the holy grails in medicine has been the use of medicine to achieve regeneration," Marban said.
Patients' own stem cells
It should be pointed out that the stem cells used did not come from the very controversial embryos, instead the cells used were developed from the patients' hearts. Again, this has huge implications in the treatment of heart disease, and other degenerative diseases for that matter.
"We've achieved what we have achieved using adult stem cells - in this case - actually specifically from a patient's own heart back into the same patient." Marten said, "There's no ethical issues with that - there's no destruction of embryos. There's no reason to worry about immune rejection."
How it works
The process takes several months. A catheter has to first be inserted in the "broken heart" to remove a small biopsy of muscle. The piece is them manipulated in the laboratory and then finally re-injected in the patient's heart. Once the cells take root, the heart will began to mend itself from the inside out.
Far-reaching implications
This revolutionary medical treatment could potentially be used to re-grow damaged kidneys, pancreas or other damaged organs. But, this is only the start of the research. There are still a lot of unknowns in the process. Surprisingly, the stem cells are not doing all the work. "The repair is from the heart itself and not from the cells we give them." said Marban.Overall the potential for this treatment is great. It will take some more time and study before healing America's broken hearts but the hope is there. Dr. Marban believes the treatment will be available to the general public within four years.
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