Bone Marrow Cells Help Heart Failure in Experiment

Bone marrow cells infused to the heart through tiny incisions helped several severe heart failure patients get markedly better, an international team of researchers reported on Tuesday.

While the doctors are not sure just what the cells did, the patients who got the treatment saw their heart function improve to nearly healthy levels. The study, presented to a meeting in Florida of the Society for Thoracic Surgery, is the latest of a series of different experiments that show so-called adult stem cells seem to be able to help repair a damaged heart. Dr. Amit Patel of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and colleagues at the Asociacion Espanola Primera de Socorros Mutuos in Montevideo, Uruguay, the Benetti Foundation in Rosario, Argentina, and Baylor University in Texas worked on 30 volunteers. All had severe congestive heart failure, a chronic condition in which the failing heart progressively pumps less and less blood. Patients feel breathless and tired, and the only cure for the worst cases is a heart transplant. The patients got either their own bone marrow cells, or a sham treatment. Patel’s team filtered out the stem cells, which have the power to generate blood, heart muscle and other cells. All the patients have severe heart failure, meaning they had an ejection fraction of less than 35 percent indicating very poor pumping action by the heart. Fifteen of the patients were given infusions of their own stem cells, using four little incisions in the chest. “All patients were discharged home within two days,” the researchers said in a statement. “Early echocardiograms showed a 35 percent improvement in ejection fraction for patients who received the cells, versus only 5 percent for the control group.” Six months after the procedure, those who got bone marrow stem cells improved to an average ejection fraction of 46 percent, with the range between 38 percent and 52 percent, which is close to what is considered healthy. “It is remarkable the level of improvement we’ve seen in these patients, who came to us with no other medical or surgical options available to them,” Patel said in a statement. “However, we don’t yet fully understand how these cells work, whether they differentiate to become heart muscle cells or cells that promote vessel growth, or whether they serve as homing signals to other cells and substances that help with repair,” he added. (Source: Society for Thoracic Surgery: Reuters Health: January 2005.)