Study Reveals Potential Self-Healing Abilities in Damaged Hearts

A new study reveals that the right therapy can significantly enhance the heart’s self-repair abilities after heart failure, potentially granting it regenerative powers that surpass those of a healthy heart.

According to an international team of researchers, this discovery could pave the way for treatments that enhance recovery in damaged hearts, though the exact reason behind the improved repair rates remains uncertain.

“The findings indicate there may be an untapped mechanism to activate the heart’s natural repair system,” says Olaf Bergmann, a molecular biologist at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute.

The study tracked recovery in 52 heart failure patients, including 28 who received a left ventricular assist device (LVAD), a surgically implanted device that aids blood circulation.

Advanced Heart Failure Patients and LVADs

Patients with advanced heart failure often rely on an LVAD for life or until a heart transplant becomes possible. In some cases, heart function improves so significantly that the device can be removed.

However, the exact mechanisms driving LVAD-supported recovery remain unclear, including whether new heart muscle cells, called cardiomyocytes, are formed during the process.

Tracking Cardiomyocyte Renewal Through Carbon-14 Analysis

To monitor cardiomyocyte renewal, researchers analyzed the levels of radioactive carbon-14 (¹⁴C) within heart cells. Because atmospheric ¹⁴C levels have been steadily declining since nuclear testing was banned in 1963, its presence in cells serves as a reliable indicator of their age.

Using mathematical models, the team calculated regeneration rates and discovered that in hearts affected by heart failure, the cardiomyocyte regeneration rate was 18 to 50 times lower than in a healthy heart.

The researchers discovered that with an LVAD implanted, heart cells regenerated at a rate at least six times faster than in a healthy heart, in addition to the device’s known benefits of improving heart function and structure.

The remarkable repair abilities observed in LVAD-supported hearts are promising, but further research is needed to uncover the mechanisms behind this effect before new treatments or drugs can be developed.

“We haven’t yet identified the cause of this phenomenon in the current data, but we plan to investigate it further at the cellular and molecular levels,” says Bergmann.

Enhancing the heart’s natural self-healing processes offers a simpler and more natural alternative to approaches like transplanting cells from other parts of the body.

While restoring a damaged heart to near full functionality remains a significant challenge, progress continues. Researchers are advancing techniques to grow heart tissue in the lab and exploring the biological mechanisms behind the heart’s natural repair attempts. Recent efforts also focus on encouraging heart cells to behave more like stem cells during repair. This latest finding adds another promising avenue for exploration.

“This provides hope that recovery following a heart incident could potentially be enhanced,” says Bergmann.

Read the original article on: Science Alert

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