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Bone Marrow Cells No Help After Heart Attack: Study

Posted on: Wednesday, 16 November 2005, 14:40 CST

By Bill Berkrot and Ransdell Pierson

DALLAS -- In a new study that apparently contradicts a recent trial, injecting patients with their own progenitor bone marrow cells a few days after a heart attack failed to improve the organ's function or reduce damage, researchers said on Wednesday.

In the 101-patient study presented at the American Heart Association's annual scientific meeting, researchers found that the heart's ability to pump had improved virtually the same degree in those injected with the bone marrow cells as in patients who had received a placebo.

They also found little difference in the size of the heart's damaged area in both groups.

Progenitor cells are immature cells much like stem cells that are thought to be capable of becoming a variety of specialized cells, although they are somewhat farther along in the differentiation process.

In another study presented here on Sunday, heart attack survivors whose hearts were infused with progenitor cells from their own bone marrow showed nearly twice the improvement in the organ's pumping ability as patients given a placebo.

Those cell therapy patients also experienced less heart enlargement and improved blood flow in the artery where the attack occurred, indicating the possibility that new blood vessels may have been created.

That raised hope that such cell therapy has the potential not only to limit further heart damage after an attack, but to regenerate heart function and tissue.

That study and smaller ones earlier looked at all manner of heart attacks, while the one presented on Wednesday focused on heart attacks in the left anterior wall of the heart.

Those are the type of heart attacks that have the highest probability of causing disability, explained Dr. Ketil Lunde, the study's lead author.

While use of bone marrow progenitor stem cells is far less controversial than embryonic stem cells, "there are controversies regarding whether these cells are capable of regenerating heart tissue," said Lunde, a cardiologist at Rikshospitalet University Hospital in Oslo, Norway.

He said results in this area of study remain inconclusive and he called for further research to explore new methods of cell therapy in heart attack patients.

Source: REUTERS

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