Bone marrow cells regenerate heart muscle

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Bone marrow cells (BMCs)
transplanted into damaged areas of the heart reduce the amount
of damage and improve heart performance, physicians in Germany
report.

Previous studies have suggested that BMCs may regenerate
damaged heart muscle when given soon after a heart attack.
However, this is the first study to examine the cells’
potential in hearts damaged further in the past.

Dr. Bodo E. Strauer and colleagues at
Heinrich-Heine-University in Dusseldorf recruited 18 patients
who had experienced a heart attack on average 27 months before.
The patients’ own BMCs retrieved the day before were infused
into the damaged heart muscle.

According to the team’s report in the Journal of the
American College of Cardiology, there were no complications of
the procedure during follow-up.

Three months later, the size of the damaged area of the
heart was reduced by 30 percent and heart pumping ability
improved considerably.

A comparison group of 18 patients with similar heart
troubles who weren’t given BMCs showed no significant changes
in damage size or pumping ability during follow-up.

These findings strongly support “regeneration of (muscle
cells) as the basis for the improvement in function,” Dr.
Roberto Bolli and colleagues at the University of Louisville in
Kentucky indicate in a related editorial.

The most plausible mechanisms for the improvement, they
say, are the differentiation of BMCs into heart muscle cells,
or activation of nearby cells that have the potential to become
heart muscle cells.

Bolli’s group concludes: “If cardiac regeneration is indeed
possible, the stem cell revolution will prove to be one of the
most significant, if not the most significant, conceptual and
therapeutic advances in cardiovascular medicine.”

SOURCE: Journal of the American College of Cardiology,
November 1, 2005.