Posted on 12/25/2024 5:30:47 PM PST by ConservativeMind
A research team found that a subset of artificial heart patients can regenerate heart muscle, which may open the door to new ways to treat and perhaps someday cure heart failure.
There is no cure for heart failure, though medications can slow its progression. The only treatment for advanced heart failure, other than a transplant, is pump replacement through an artificial heart, called a left ventricular assist device.
Said Hesham Sadek, MD, Ph.D., "When a heart muscle is injured, it doesn't grow back. We have nothing to reverse heart muscle loss."
Sadek led a collaboration between international experts to investigate whether heart muscles can regenerate.
The investigators found that patients with artificial hearts regenerated muscle cells at more than six times the rate of healthy hearts.
Sadek said, "It strongly supports the hypothesis that the inability of the heart muscle to 'rest' is a major driver of the heart's lost ability to regenerate shortly after birth."
These findings, combined with other research teams' observations that a minority of artificial heart patients could have their devices removed after experiencing a reversal of symptoms, led him to wonder if the artificial heart provides cardiac muscles the equivalent of bedrest in a person recovering from a soccer injury.
"The pump pushes blood into the aorta, bypassing the heart," he said. "The heart is essentially resting."
Sadek's previous studies indicated that this rest might be beneficial for the heart muscle cells, but he needed to design an experiment to determine whether patients with artificial hearts were actually regenerating muscles.
"Irrefutable evidence of heart muscle regeneration has never been shown before in humans," he said. "This study provided direct evidence."
Next, Sadek wants to figure out why only about 25% of patients are "responders" to artificial hearts.
(Excerpt) Read more at medicalxpress.com ...
It is due to allowing the heart to largely rest those affected cells.
Correction: the device is not a transplant.
It is instead of a transplant. Sorry about that.
“Unexpected” is what we call phenomenon that occur outside of the orthodoxy of scientism
I worked with a guy who had one installed on two different occasions before getting his transplant. Before each meeting, he would brief people that because he didn’t have a pulse, not to do CPR. He said that it took him a while to learn to stand up because the device provided a constant flow, pressure that can’t take into account different physical changes.
“I worked with a guy who had one installed on two different occasions before getting his transplant. Before each meeting, he would brief people that because he didn’t have a pulse, not to do CPR. He said that it took him a while to learn to stand up because the device provided a constant flow, pressure that can’t take into account different physical changes.”
Old tech.
That's the theory for why people's native heart function can improve after having been on an LVAD. This improvement is not uncommon. The broad theory postulates that metabolic parameters and gene expression patterns can revert to normal when the hemodynamic overload on the myocardium is decreased with an assist device.
Regarding the 'regeneration' issue, adult cardiomyocytes can definitely have nucleic acid synthesis and even nuclear division, but cytokinesis (actual cell division) is rare or non-existent after cardiomyocytes mature.
I will read the paper and keep an open mind.
“ Said Hesham Sadek, MD, Ph.D., “When a heart muscle is injured, it doesn’t grow back. We have nothing to reverse heart muscle loss.”
Sadek led a collaboration between international experts to investigate whether heart muscles can regenerate.
The investigators found that patients with artificial hearts regenerated muscle cells at more than six times the rate of healthy hearts.”
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This seems to be contradictory. On the one hand, this guy says that heart muscle can’t grow back. On the other hand, with an artificial heart, the muscle tissue grows back at six times the rate of unassisted heart tissue. Thus, unassisted heart tissue DOES grow back. Well which is it?
As for me, not being a doctor or a scientist, it seems to me that stem cells naturally present in our bodies that help to perform rebuilding of various tissues would also do the same in the heart. The rebuilding is not necessarily perfect or complete, but it would seem that some improvement would be possible overtime. Of course, through diet one can affect the number of stem cells that are circulating in your bloodstream. Having had a heart attack this past summer, I would welcome any comments on this matter.
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