Muscle-cell Injections by Catheter Repair Heart

Recent research has shown that injections of precursor cells taken from a patient’s muscles can repair damage to the heart after a heart attack. Now, Dutch investigators report that the treatment can be delivered by a catheter inserted into an artery, thus avoiding the need for surgery.

Recent research has shown that injections of precursor cells taken from a patient’s muscles can repair damage to the heart after a heart attack. Now, Dutch investigators report that the treatment can be delivered by a catheter inserted into an artery, thus avoiding the need for surgery. The procedure involves guiding a special catheter through a leg artery up into the heart, where it generates a map of the area of damage in the heart vessel. The researchers can then are able to inject this area directly with millions of myoblasts, which are primitive muscle cells that have the potential to develop into fully fledged muscle fibers. As reported in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Dr. Pieter C. Smits and colleagues, from Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, tested the system on five patients who developed heart failure after they had a heart attack. In all cases, the myoblasts were harvested by taking biopsies from the patient’s quadriceps muscle under a local anesthetic. Myoblasts were separated out and grown in culture for 17 days. No complications occurred during the transplantation procedures and no serious adverse events were seen during follow-up, the authors note. However, one patient did need a cardioverter-defibrillator device implanted after the procedure because of an irregular heart rhythm. Three months after the myoblast injections, heart output had improved and the trend was still favorable at six months. In addition, MRI showed a significant thickening of the heart wall near the injection sites. “The beauty of this study is that even though it was small, it was done in the catheterization lab and it was a stand-alone therapy,” Dr. Raj R. Makkar, co-author of a related editorial, said in a statement. Since no other treatment was given to improve heart function “you can more confidently say that whatever was seen was actually because of cell therapy.” Still, “I think future trials with myoblasts should focus a lot more on the possibility of arrhythmias occurring with this particular therapy,” Makkar, from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, added. (Source: Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Reuters Health, Dec 17, 2003)