StemCell Therapy

The use of stem cells in the treatment of heart failure cases is currently being investigated. Cardiovascular disease is the #1 killer in the United States accounting forone third ofall deaths.Heart disease kills more people than cancer, HIV, diabetesor trauma. Many advances in medical and surgical treatment of heart disease have contributed to a growing number of patients in their 70s and 80s with congestive heart failure. An estimated 1% of the Western world has congestive heart failure, including over 5 million Americans with an additional 550,000 new cases each year. Patients with advanced heart failure who require hospitalization, have a 50% mortality within the first fiveyears.The patients with significant coronary artery disease can sometimes undergo coronary artery bypass surgery or percutaneous coronary intervention to open up blocked arteries. Below is an example of a patient evaluated for heart failure and was found to have severe coronary disease. He later underwent bypass surgery.In addition, current medical treatment of patients with congestive heart failure include proven beneficial medicine such as beta-blockers, ACE inhibitors, angiotensinIIreceptor blockers, angiotensin IIreceptor blocker Neprilysin inhibitors and diuretics. When appropriate, resynchronization of the right and left ventricles can be accomplished with special types of pacemaker and can be combined with a defibrillator (BiV-ICD). However, even after following all of these guideline proven therapies, some patients still run out of options and continue to have severe and debilitating congestive heart failure. Below is an example of a patient with severe heart failure symptoms despite having normal coronaries and a BiV-ICD.Heart transplant is a last resort for end stage heart disease.There is a very low number of donor hearts and transplant programs have very restricted eligibility criteria leaving a large number patients with very few options.There are reasons to believe that regenerative therapy could really help patients with congestive heart failure. Multi-potent cardiac stem cells exist in the heart and participate in the normal turnover of heart muscle cells and small blood vessels.A heart attack kills heart muscle which is made of millions of heart cells. The question is: Would regenerative therapy be able to replace those heart cells or cardiac myocytes?Thousands of patients have been enrolled in clinical trials to address this question. Regenerative or stem cell therapy has been shown to be safe. Modest benefits have been demonstrated but the mechanism has not been completely elucidated. So far, there is no evidence that cells regenerate from the transplanted stem cells. Animal studies have shown that only 1% of the stem cells injected into the heart tissue are detectable after 1 month. The clinical benefits observed appeared to be due to arelease of growth factors which triggers endogenous repair of the heart cells and inhibits cell death and fibrosis resulting in increased performance of the heart muscle.

An example of an abnormal echocardiogram.

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Stem Cells in the Treatment of Heart Failure MyHeart

This entry was posted on July 17, 2018 at 8:42 am and is filed under Death by Stem Cells. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |