Bone Marrow Cells Regenerate Heart Muscle

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Bone marrow cells (BMCs) transplanted into damaged areas of the heart reduce the amount of damage and improve heart performance, physicians in Germany report.

Previous studies have suggested that BMCs may regenerate damaged heart muscle when given soon after a heart attack. However, this is the first study to examine the cells' potential in hearts damaged further in the past.

Dr. Bodo E. Strauer and colleagues at Heinrich-Heine-University in Dusseldorf recruited 18 patients who had experienced a heart attack on average 27 months before. The patients' own BMCs retrieved the day before were infused into the damaged heart muscle.

According to the team's report in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, there were no complications of the procedure during follow-up.

Three months later, the size of the damaged area of the heart was reduced by 30 percent and heart pumping ability improved considerably.

A comparison group of 18 patients with similar heart troubles who weren't given BMCs showed no significant changes in damage size or pumping ability during follow-up.

These findings strongly support "regeneration of (muscle cells) as the basis for the improvement in function," Dr. Roberto Bolli and colleagues at the University of Louisville in Kentucky indicate in a related editorial.

The most plausible mechanisms for the improvement, they say, are the differentiation of BMCs into heart muscle cells, or activation of nearby cells that have the potential to become heart muscle cells.

Bolli's group concludes: "If cardiac regeneration is indeed possible, the stem cell revolution will prove to be one of the most significant, if not the most significant, conceptual and therapeutic advances in cardiovascular medicine."

SOURCE: Journal of the American College of Cardiology, November 1, 2005.