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research shows heart muscle can heal itself with right support and rest
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there is currently no cure for heart failure, although medications and healthy habits can slow the progression.
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new research has shown that the heart muscle in humans has the capacity to regenerate, pointing to potential therapies and a cure for heart failure.
scientists at the university of arizona’s sarver heart center in tucson co-led an international study of artificial heart patients where some patients regenerated muscle cells at more than six times the rate of healthy hearts. the results were published recently in the journal circulation.
there is currently no cure for heart failure, although medications and healthy habits can slow the progression. the treatment for advanced heart failure is a heart transplant with a donor heart or a pump replacement through an artificial heart, called a left ventricular assist device, which provides a constant flow of blood to the rest of your body.
key to regeneration is rest for heart muscle
what’s actually happening with the left ventricular assist device is key to discovery, the research team has found. the pump pushes blood into the aorta, bypassing the heart. so, the heart muscle is essentially resting—something the heart doesn’t naturally do right after birth and onward because it focuses 24-7 on pumping blood.
as dr. hesham sadek, director of the sarver heart center and chief of cardiology at the university, explains in a university news report, “skeletal muscle has a significant ability to regenerate after injury. if you’re playing soccer and you tear a muscle, you need to rest it, and it heals.” he continues, “when a heart muscle is injured, it doesn’t grow back. we have nothing to reverse heart muscle loss.”
sadek led the research collaboration that began with tissue from artificial heart patients provided by colleagues at the university of utah health and school of medicine led by dr. stavros drakos, a pioneer in left ventricular assist device-mediated recovery. physician scientists from the karolinska institute in stockholm, led teams in sweden and germany and used their method of carbon dating human heart tissue to investigate whether these samples contained newly generated cells. they did, as mentioned, finding that some patients regenerated muscle cells at more than six times the rate of healthy hearts.
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“this is the strongest evidence we have, so far, that human heart muscle cells can actually regenerate, which really is exciting, because it solidifies the notion that there is an intrinsic capacity of the human heart to regenerate,” sadek says in the news report.
“it also 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. it may be possible to target the molecular pathways involved in cell division to enhance the heart’s ability to regenerate.”
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