Originally published October 28 2005
Bone marrow stem cells used to treat heart patients
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Bodo E. Strauer, M.D. from the Heinrich-Heine-University in Düsseldorf, Germany, has helped to develop a therapy that regenerates functions in unhealthy hearts by infusing patients with their own bone marrow stem cells.
"This new therapy is able to treat until now irreversible heart complaints and function disturbances in patients with chronic coronary artery disease after myocardial infarction, even many years after heart attack.
If further trials produce similar results, cardiac regeneration using stem cells could help to not only reverse some heart attack damage, reduce symptoms and improve the daily functioning of patients; it might also reduce the risk of heart failure, Dr. Strauer said.
Current heart attack interventions attempt to restore blood flow to the heart muscle as soon as possible, in order to limit the amount of permanent scarring.
However, neither clotbusting drugs nor angioplasty can restore heart tissue that has already been damaged.
Earlier studies demonstrated healing of heart muscle and improved heart function following injections of stem cells directly into the heart muscle or infusions of stem cells into key heart arteries soon after a heart attack.
The researchers harvested bone marrow from the hip bones of the patients, so there was no threat of transplant rejection.
"It should be noted that until now only 18 patients have been transplanted and were compared to a representative control group.
"The success of this approach will grow with time, yet more research is required to identify the ideal route of implantation, and the type of cell transplantation that is most efficient for regenerating damaged myocardium."
This widens dramatically the applicability of stem cell therapies," Dr. Bolli said.
Dr. Bolli pointed out that since the Strauer et al. study was not randomized nor double-blinded, and involved only 18 patients, it does not provide conclusive proof that the technique is effective.
However, he noted that the results of large randomized, double-blinded clinical trials are expected soon.
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