As we age, our heart muscles accumulate damage from wear and tear, and this can eventually cause heart disease.
Congenital defects are not the only source of damage to the heart—heart cells may also deteriorate over time due to heart attacks, drug and alcohol use, associated diseases, and many others. The human heart can’t regenerate itself, so once damage occurs, the disease only progresses; furthermore, a damaged heart can’t pump blood as effectively throughout the body. This can result in various symptoms, including elevated blood pressure and low oxygen in tissues and organs.
The heart may try to compensate by stretching its walls or working harder, but this generally only exacerbates the issues already present. Current treatments for heart disease range from whole or partial heart transplants, to the use of blood thinners and other drugs. These strategies seek to completely replace damaged tissue or make it easier for a damaged heart to function. However, these treatments are often prohibitively expensive and time-consuming; additionally, they can limit the patient’s quality of life.
Stem cells are unspecialized cells with the unique ability to become any type of cell in the body, in a process called ‘differentiation’. When supplied to a patient’s body, these cells migrate to dead or damaged tissue, where they orchestrate repair and regeneration. This is why modern medicine has turned to stem cell therapy for a variety of conditions. For example, in a study published in The Lancet, researchers treated heart attack patients with an infusion of stem cells taken from the patients’ own hearts. A year after the procedure, the amount of scar tissue had decreased by 50%.
Three different strategies are currently being explored for the treatment of heart disease using stem cells. One strategy involves taking stem cells from the patient’s own bone marrow, and then transplanting these directly into the heart using a catheter. Another method involves the use of donated stem cells to create patches or grafts that can be applied to damaged areas. These patches can then stimulate , healing in the tissue underneath. Lastly, researchers are also trying to reprogram the patient’s own heart cells back into stem cells that can promote healing. This would bypass the need for a cell transplant.
All three potential treatments have seen promising results. More importantly, these methods remain safe for the patient. A recent clinical trial, done on 315 heart failure patients, found stem cell therapy to be safe even in the long term.
