Myocardial infarction patients may soon have a new treatment option. According to HealthDay News, scientists at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles have successfully repaired heart damage by treating patients with their own cardiac stem cells.

These cardiosphere-derived stem cells have been known to heal damaged tissue, but this is the first study in which heart-attack patients have been treated with stem cells from their own body. Researchers said the cells worked to regrow damaged heart muscle and eventually reversed scarring sustained during the trauma.

Previously, heart attack victims’ only option was to have physicians surgically clear their blocked arteries.

“In our treatment, we dissolved scar and replaced it with living heart muscle,” explained study author Eduardo Marban. “Such ‘therapeutic regeneration’ has long been the holy grail of cell therapy, but had never been accomplished before; we now seem to have done it.”

For the study, researchers followed 25 middle-aged patients with an average age of 53 who had suffered a heart attack. Of this group, 17 underwent stem cell infusions; eight received standard post-heart attack care.

To retrieve the stem cells, doctors inserted a catheter through a neck vein and down to the heart, retrieving a small portion of cells. They were then transplanted back into the patient through a second procedure described as “minimally invasive.”

One year later, stem cell patients showed a 12 percent decrease in scar size and a recovery in muscle strength. Patients who received standard treatment showed no such scar shrinkage.

This research is just the first step, however, and HealthDay notes that findings from the study are preliminary, and were based on just a small group of patients.

The study is published in The Lancet.

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Myocardial Infarction Could Be Treated With Stem Cells

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