Heart Healing Looks Promising

[statusquobuster]

Have a heart. Have a newer heart, without a heart transplant. Hearts healing themselves: Not a crazy idea, but a new hope.

In the history of science there frequently is a scientist who has an idea that nearly all other scientists think is nonsense. It takes time and a lot of research usually for enough evidence to be pile up to convince the world that the creative scientist is correct. And now we have research results that show an idea put forth in 1987 by Dr. Piero Anversa, now of the Harvard Medical School, was absolutely correct. He asserted that new heart cells replace old ones. In other words, that hearts regenerate themselves.

Read the rest of my article at:

Heart Healing Looks Promising by Joel Hirschhorn

 

[KittenKoder]

Too bad this topic doesn't have enough controversy for most people to notice ...

... it's a great idea, thanks for posting the good news.

 

[waltky]

possum feels sorry for the lil baby mouses...

Day-Old Mice Grow Back New Heart Tissue After Injury
March 02, 2011 - Scientists hope to heal human heart attack victims

Experiments done on laboratory mice suggest it might one day be possible for the human heart to repair itself. Right now, when humans have a heart attack, heart muscles die after being cut off from their blood supply. But what if the heart could grow new muscle to replace the dead tissue? Some amphibians can regrow body parts, even entire limbs. But humans and other higher animals mostly lack that ability, called regeneration. There are exceptions. Liver tissue, for example, will regrow after part of the organ is removed in surgery. But that's not true with most other organs, including the heart.

In a new study at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, researchers cut off a piece of the heart in tiny, day-old mice. Hesham Sadek explains the procedure. "We cut off the tip until we see the chamber of the heart. And amazingly enough, the animals survive and they form a blood clot and they don't bleed to death. And within three weeks, that tip grows back." Grows back as normal, functioning heart muscle, not just closed up with scar tissue.

The mice retain the ability to grow back functioning heart tissue only during their first week of life, and Sadek says it's important to identify exactly when the mouse stops being able to regenerate heart tissue, to see what other changes happen at that point "so we can identify potential factors that are either on or off at this window that we can reintroduce them or block them and have the heart regain this capacity again." What is encouraging, Sadek says, is that the heart - or at least the mouse heart - is born with this ability to regenerate. "We discovered that the heart can do this by itself," he says. "It just forgets how to do that or turns it off for some reason. And the question now is, can we remind the heart to do this again?"

And not just after a week or two - but decades later, when a person suffers a heart attack. "If we can develop actual therapies from this model, the goal would be to convince the heart, instead of forming a scar, the heart now will basically just fill it back up with contractile cells, cells that will contract and pump blood, and the heart will regain its function again."

Source

 

[waltky]

In some cases, helps childrens' heart to heal on their own...

Life-saving Heart Pump Developed for Children
August 10, 2012 — A study unveiled this week in the New England Journal of Medicine demonstrates the safety and benefits of a small heart pump first developed in Germany and called The "Berlin Heart." There were 17 institutions in North America and Europe involved in the study, which was led by doctors in Houston, at Baylor College of Medicine and the Texas Children's Hospital. A number of young lives were saved during the test period that began in 2007.

Sixteen-year-old Marco Murguia can now play basketball and live a normal life. But in early 2007, when he was ten, his mother, Connie Murguia, noticed he was acting sluggish and took him to Texas Children's Hospital in Houston. "His heart wouldn't pump enough blood and he was pale," she recalls. Doctors said Marco had a failing heart and put him on a list for a transplant. But the wait for a child's heart can be very long, and Marco spent three months on the Berlin Heart. Using pumps that match the patient's size, this device assists the ailing heart with tubes attached through the chest.

Doctor Charles Fraser, chief surgeon at Texas Children's Hospital, was the principal investigator in the newly-released study of this so-called Pediatric Ventricular Assist Device. "Our hearts are designed to inject the amount of blood that our body needs, so this pump is designed to be commensurate in size to the patient," he explains. Usually, children who need a heart transplant are kept alive, but sedated and immobile - and for only a matter of weeks. But with the Berlin heart, patients remain awake while the pump keeps them alive for as long as 192 days. “Blood going through the valve into the pumping chamber pumps through the valve - these are one-way valves, the blood can only go in the direction of the arrows, back to the body," said Doctor Charles Fraser.

Dr. Fraser first used the Berlin Heart seven years ago on a tiny infant. "This patient was dying. We were able to support him with the device, actually a device this size. He subsequently achieved a cardiac transplant, and he is doing great," he said. Though the study found that around 30 percent of patients using this device suffered mild strokes, Dr. Fraser said that risk is acceptable, given the much higher survival rate the pump achieves. “The children who get listed for a heart transplant - if they do not get a heart transplant, they are not going to make it," he said. Dr. Fraser hopes further study will lead to even better devices so that children like Marco Murguia can survive and enjoy active, healthy lives.

Source

 

[Douger]

Now they tell me !

 

[waltky]

Usin' nano-fibers to fix hearts...

Scientists Use Biomaterials to Improve Heart Function
August 12, 2012 - Scientists say hearts may someday be repaired using biomaterials and miniscule fibers smaller than a human hair.

Heart attack followed by heart failure is a leading cause of death, particularly in the West. According to experts, nearly a million Americans suffer a heart attack, or mycardial infarction (MI), each year, and a half million more experience more than one heart attack. Damage to the heart muscle following an MI can lead to cardiac failure in which a weakened heart can no longer keep up with the demands of the body. Those with cardiac failure often die within a few years of diagnosis. But hearts can be healed.

At her lab at the University of California San Diego, biomedical engineer Karen Christman is conducting experiments in pigs to regenerate the heart using healthy engineered myocardial tissue. All of the cells in the tissue are stripped away, creating a ghost-like, white scaffolding, which is processed into a liquid. The material is then injected into damaged portions of the pig's heart muscle following a heart attack. Once inside the heart, Christman says the liquid forms a fibrous and porous matrix. “It then induces the body’s own cells to come into that and help to prevent this negative remodeling process that happens after a heart attack and therefore prevent heart failure," she said.

Meanwhile, scientists at National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan and the University of California in San Francisco California report creating polymer nano-fibers made of peptides to help heal the heart. Peptides are molecules formed from two or more amino acids or proteins. In their experiments, the researchers added a vascular or heart growth molecule to the mix and injected the combination into rodents’ hearts immediately following a heart attack. One month later, the rats’ heart function had improved.

Inside the damaged tissues, the nano-fibers had formed a scaffolding to support the growth of new arteries and attract cells to repair damage to the heart. The investigators also conducted the experiment with pigs, whose hearts more closely resemble that of a human heart, finding that the nano-fiber and heart growth combination started to repair and restore normal function to those animals' hearts, as well.

Christman praises the nano-fiber research. “I think it’s quite an exciting study. And I think we will start to see the potential new injectable biomaterial therapies translated into people in the near future," she said. Christman and her colleagues have formed a biomedical company to develop her lab's therapy for human trials. They hope to begin early clinical studies next year. An article on the use of nano-fibers to repair heart damage and a commentary by Karen Christman are published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Source

 

[courseofhistory]

Spectacular! I hope that humans can reap the benefits soon!

 

[waltky]

Dey don't know why, it just do...

Blood group 'linked to heart disease'
15 August 2012 - It is not known why those with blood group AB are most at risk of heart disease

People from blood groups A, B and AB are more at risk of heart disease than those with the more common blood type O, a study suggests. Those with the rarest blood group, AB, are the most vulnerable - they are 23% more likely to suffer from heart disease than those with blood group O. The researchers do not know why this is, but are now looking at how blood groups respond to improved lifestyle. The findings are published in an American Heart Association Journal.

The study also found that for individuals with blood group B the risk of heart disease increased by 11%, and for blood type A, by 5%. Lead author Prof Lu Qi, from the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, said: "While people cannot change their blood type, our findings may help physicians better understand who is at risk of developing heart disease. "It's good to know your blood type the same way you should know your cholesterol or blood pressure numbers.

Reduce the risk

"If you know you're at higher risk, you can reduce the risk by adopting a healthier lifestyle, such as eating right, exercising and not smoking." The British Heart Foundation stressed it is important that we all look after ourselves to reduce the risk. Doireann Maddock, a senior cardiac nurse from the charity said: "Nobody can influence what type of blood they are born with but a healthy lifestyle is something everybody can have an influence over. "Eating healthily, getting active and stopping smoking are the types of things you should be worrying about, not your blood type. "While these findings are certainly interesting we'll need more research to draw any firm conclusions about blood type and its role in heart disease risk."

The study did not look at why different blood types appear to have different risks of heart disease. Prof Qi said: "Blood type is very complicated, so there could be multiple mechanisms at play." However, blood group AB has been linked to inflammation, which plays an important role in artery damage. There is also evidence that blood group A is associated with higher levels of the 'bad' type of cholesterol, low density lipoprotein (LDL), a waxy substance that can clog arteries.

Ethnic uncertainty

 

[Political Junky]

Heart failure can be caused by many things, including cardiomyopathy from a viral infection.
The use of stem cells is encouraging.

 

[waltky]

Whenever planes fly overhead and radio the control tower, it makes Granny's pacemaker flutter...

Heart failure implant operation trialled in UK
22 August 2012 - The trial study is looking at whether this device could help heart-failure patients

A pioneering operation in Leicester to fit a nerve-stimulating implant in a patient with heart failure has been successful. Similar to a pacemaker, it was fitted to the vagus nerve, part of the nervous system running between the heart and brain down the right side of the neck. Researchers hope this will cut the stress on the heart, reducing swelling and improving quality of life. It has been trialled in 32 European patients, but not in the UK before.

Similar nerve-simulating implants have been trialled in Bristol and Liverpool - but this one is more specific - only targeting signals that go to the heart, and not those that go from the heart to the brain. Prof Jeremy Pearson, from the British Heart Foundation said: "Heart failure affects more than 750,000 people in the UK alone and we need new ways to tackle this often debilitating condition. "This new procedure could help patients who are responding poorly to current treatment.

Enlarged heart

"This is the first large trial to test if the treatment really works and we look forward to seeing the results, which may help thousands of people." Heart failure can be the result of high blood pressure, dead heart muscle after a heart attack, or a genetic condition. The heart pumps blood around the body, and when it fails to do this properly people can become tired and out of breath far more quickly. For some patients, sitting in an armchair feels like running a marathon.

Clinical trial

As the heart loses its ability to pump, it fills with too much blood and becomes stretched over time. The more the heart enlarges, the worse the symptoms. Dr Andre Ng, the cardiologist who performed the procedure at Glenfield Hospital, said: "The operation went very well. This is a potentially ground-breaking treatment for desperate patients with heart failure, a serious condition that has increased over the past years in epidemic proportions. "My University of Leicester research group has been studying the relationship between vagus nerve stimulation and heart function for almost 15 years. "[This study] could transform heart failure treatment and support the use of the innovative therapy over and above tablets for standard heart failure treatment."

The technique is being trialled in humans after it was shown to keep rats and dogs alive for longer. Patients who have taken part in the pilot clinical study so far have seen improvements in heart function, resting heart rate and quality of life. The study will eventually involve more than 600 patients in up to 80 centres worldwide.

BBC News - Heart failure implant operation trialled in UK

 

[waltky]

Feeling of drowning is symptom of severe heart failure...

Severe heart failure can feel 'like drowning'
23 September 2012 - People with heart failure can feel as if they are drowning

Severe heart failure can cause the lungs to fill with fluid, leaving people feeling like they are drowning, says a new campaign by the British Heart Foundation. But a BHF survey suggests that 80% of adults are unaware of its impact on everyday life. There is no cure for heart failure, which can lead to extreme exhaustion and breathlessness. Experts say stem cell research could be the key to repairing damaged hearts.

More than 750,000 people in the UK currently live with heart failure, which means that the heart is not pumping blood around the body as well as it used to. It is commonly caused by a heart attack. While patients with mild heart failure can live a relatively normal life with the help of drugs, those with severe heart failure can suffer prolonged pain and distress because everyday tasks such as having a shower or doing the shopping require enormous amounts of energy and leave them exhausted.

No repair

Past UK research suggests that around 28% of all heart failure patients face a daily struggle as a result of permanent damage to the heart muscle. However, the survey of 2,170 adults by the British Heart Foundation suggests that more than three-quarters of respondents are unaware of the effects of severe heart failure on people's lives. More than a third of those surveyed thought that heart failure meant that the heart stopped working altogether and 33% wrongly believed the heart could repair itself.

Dr Mike Knapton, associate medical director at the BHF, say more and more people are surviving heart attacks due to advances in medicine but this creates its own problem. "People with acute, severe heart failure have a worse prognosis than most cancers. Heart failure has a very significant effect on morbidity. It can be disabling, it can leave people breathless and they can end up chair-bound and bed-bound."

The priority now, he says, is to find out how to repair damage to the heart with the help of the BHF's Mending Broken Hearts Appeal. "The human heart cell is not able to regenerate, unlike the liver, and we want to understand why in order to improve new treatments for the future. "We aim to raise money to carry out basic research into regenerative medicine. Stem cells could help by offering therapeutic interventions." He added that it was possible that a cure for heart failure could be achieved within 10 to 15 years.

BBC News - Severe heart failure can feel 'like drowning'

See also:

Man needing heart transplant stuns doctors when organ mends
Monday September 24, 2012 - Christy Crowe was mad. Mad at the circumstances. Mad at everything. She was even kind of mad at God.

Weeks earlier, an infection had attacked her youngest brother's heart. He needed a transplant. The family waited and prayed for a donor. Finally, the transplant team found a heart. But hours later, doctors delivered terrible news: Her brother, Michael, had developed blood poisoning. If they proceeded with the transplant, the infection could kill him. “Our joy of ‘Yay, there's a heart!' went to devastation,” Christy said. The roller-coaster ride was one of many the Crowe family would take over the course of a month as doctors worked to keep the 23-year-old alive. The Crowes got through it by trusting the doctors and praying — a lot — for God's help. The notion that Michael would need a new heart had been unthinkable just a few weeks before. Michael was about to start his second year at the University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Pharmacy. He worked as a pharmacy tech. Known for his kindness, he baked cookies for his study group. Early in his hospitalization, classmates wrote on a giant card that they missed his smile and upbeat personality.

Michael, a Skutt Catholic High School graduate, didn't go to church every week but was a faith-filled person, said his mom, Margie. On Aug. 13, Michael felt sick. His mother told him to take it easy. The next day he started vomiting and had a fever and chills. The day after, the family doctor drew blood, ruled out a bacterial infection and concluded that Michael had a bad case of stomach flu. Take Pepto-Bismol, he advised, and drink lots of fluids. Michael wasn't sick often. He figured he would get better. But his mom took him back to the family home near 156th Street and West Center Road instead of his apartment. Two days later, Michael told Margie he was hungry. She gave him applesauce, flipped on the Ellen DeGeneres TV show, then turned toward her son. Michael was stiff on the couch. Frozen — with his eyes open. Margie shook him. He snapped out of it, sweating profusely even though his temperature was 96. Margie changed his shirt and got him back to the couch. Again, he froze. Stiff as a statue. Eyes open. Margie shook her son and hit his face. Michael felt the slaps but was unable to speak. Ten seconds later, he came around.

Margie rushed him to nearby Lakeside Hospital, where doctors ran tests on his heart. A cardiologist told Margie and her husband, John, that Michael had a serious heart problem and needed to go to the Nebraska Medical Center. Margie couldn't believe what was happening. She'd thought Michael was dehydrated. At the med center, doctors determined he had acute myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle, an uncommon condition likely caused by a viral infection. His heart was functioning at only 10 percent efficiency. With a sluggish blood flow, Michael's other organs were starting to fail. The bottom line: He needed a heart transplant. In the meantime, doctors sedated Michael and hooked him up to a machine that took over his heart and lung functions and filtered his blood — a short-term fix. That night, classmates came to the hospital, as did the Rev. Tom Bauwens, pastor at the family's church, St. Wenceslaus Catholic. Friends soon started a prayer chain. Christy, 31, drove from Minneapolis and posted daily updates on the Caring Bridge website. Michael's page attracted more than 30,000 visitors and 1,100 comments. Through an email blast, St. Wenceslaus asked its 3,000 families to pray for Michael.

More http://www.omaha.com/article/20120923/LIVEWELL01/709239933/1685

 

[Noah_raffi]

gpood ha

 

[Clifford]

We cut off the tip until we see the stage of the center. And incredibly enough, the creatures endure and they form a blood clog and they don't hemorrhage to loss of life. And within three weeks, that tip develops returning." Grows returning as regular, performing center muscular, not just shut up with scars.

 

[waltky]

Thought that was what the pacemaker was needed for...

Heartbeat 'could power pacemaker'
4 November 2012 - A device which could harness energy from a beating heart can produce enough electricity to keep a pacemaker running, according to US researchers.

Repeated operations are currently needed to replace batteries in pacemakers. Tests suggested the device could produce 10 times the amount of energy needed. The British Heart Foundation said clinical trials were needed to show it would be safe for patients. Piezoelectric materials generate an electric charge when their shape is changed. They are used in some microphones to convert vibrations into an electrical signal. Researchers at the University of Michigan are trying to use the movement of the heart as a source of electricity.

In tests designed to simulate a range of heartbeats, enough electricity was generated to power a pacemaker. The designers now want to test the device on a real heart and build it into a commercial pacemaker. Dr Amin Karami told a meeting of the American Heart Association that pacemaker batteries needed to be replaced approximately every seven years. "Many of the patients are children who live with pacemakers for many years. You can imagine how many operations they are spared if this new technology is implemented."

Prof Peter Weissberg, the medical director at the British Heart Foundation, said: "Advancing technology over recent years has meant people with pacemakers need to change their battery less often. This device could be another step forward along this path. "If researchers can refine the technology and it proves robust in clinical trials, it would further reduce the need for battery changes."

BBC News - Heartbeat 'could power pacemaker'

 

[waltky]

Using stem cells from strangers to repair hearts...

Study: Stem cells from strangers can repair hearts
6 Nov.`12 — Researchers are reporting a key advance in using stem cells to repair hearts damaged by heart attacks. In a study, stem cells donated by strangers proved as safe and effective as patients' own cells for helping restore heart tissue.

The work involved just 30 patients in Miami and Baltimore, but it proves the concept that anyone's cells can be used to treat such cases. Doctors are excited because this suggests that stem cells could be banked for off-the-shelf use after heart attacks, just as blood is kept on hand now. Results were discussed Monday at an American Heart Association conference in California and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The study used a specific type of stem cells from bone marrow that researchers believed would not be rejected by recipients. Unlike other cells, these lack a key feature on their surface that makes the immune system see them as foreign tissue and attack them, explained the study's leader, Dr. Joshua Hare of the University of Miami. The patients in the study had suffered heart attacks years earlier, some as long as 30 years ago. All had developed heart failure because the scar tissue from the heart attack had weakened their hearts so much that they grew large and flabby, unable to pump blood effectively.

Researchers advertised for people to supply marrow, which is removed using a needle into a hip bone. The cells were taken from the marrow and amplified for about a month in a lab at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University, then returned to Miami to be used for treatment, which did not involve surgery. The cells were delivered through a tube pushed through a groin artery into the heart near the scarred area. Fifteen patients were given cells from their own marrow and 15 others, cells from strangers.

About a year later, scar tissue had been reduced by about one-third. Both groups had improvements in how far they could walk and in quality of life. There was no significant difference in one measure of how well their hearts were able to pump blood, but doctors hope these patients will continue to improve over time, or that refinements in treatment will lead to better results. The big attraction is being able to use cells supplied by others, with no blood or tissue matching needed. "You could have the cells ready to go in the blood bank so when the patient comes in for a therapy — there's no delay," Hare said. "It's also cheaper to make the donor cells," and a single marrow donor can supply enough cells to treat as many as 10 people.

MORE

 

[whitehall]

Yeah, maybe the researchers can get more federal funding. Isn't that what it's all about? The human heart muscle might replace muscle cells but suggesting that taxpayer funded grants will result in a new heart for heart attack victims is like saying hang nail growth can be used to make a new finger. It's medico-babble times ten.

 

[Luddly Neddite]

possum feels sorry for the lil baby mouses...

Day-Old Mice Grow Back New Heart Tissue After Injury
March 02, 2011 - Scientists hope to heal human heart attack victims

Experiments done on laboratory mice suggest it might one day be possible for the human heart to repair itself. Right now, when humans have a heart attack, heart muscles die after being cut off from their blood supply. But what if the heart could grow new muscle to replace the dead tissue? Some amphibians can regrow body parts, even entire limbs. But humans and other higher animals mostly lack that ability, called regeneration. There are exceptions. Liver tissue, for example, will regrow after part of the organ is removed in surgery. But that's not true with most other organs, including the heart.

In a new study at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, researchers cut off a piece of the heart in tiny, day-old mice. Hesham Sadek explains the procedure. "We cut off the tip until we see the chamber of the heart. And amazingly enough, the animals survive and they form a blood clot and they don't bleed to death. And within three weeks, that tip grows back." Grows back as normal, functioning heart muscle, not just closed up with scar tissue.

The mice retain the ability to grow back functioning heart tissue only during their first week of life, and Sadek says it's important to identify exactly when the mouse stops being able to regenerate heart tissue, to see what other changes happen at that point "so we can identify potential factors that are either on or off at this window that we can reintroduce them or block them and have the heart regain this capacity again." What is encouraging, Sadek says, is that the heart - or at least the mouse heart - is born with this ability to regenerate. "We discovered that the heart can do this by itself," he says. "It just forgets how to do that or turns it off for some reason. And the question now is, can we remind the heart to do this again?"

And not just after a week or two - but decades later, when a person suffers a heart attack. "If we can develop actual therapies from this model, the goal would be to convince the heart, instead of forming a scar, the heart now will basically just fill it back up with contractile cells, cells that will contract and pump blood, and the heart will regain its function again."

Source

More to the point, mice are not small hairy humans. Many scientists now believe that "basic model" experiments are simply bad science.

You can do a little experiment of your own ... Every time you see one of these "exciting breakthrough" articles, look for the lines that say something like, 'cannot be extrapolated to humans' and 'more animal testing needed'.

Reason is, its a publish or perish world. If you don't get your "work" published, you can't get grant money to do it again or to come up with some other way of getting paid to torture animals for fun and profit.

Those who follow these things will tell you that not one of these "exciting breakthroughs" is ever heard from again but that's okay. They got their grant money and they're still doing the same old basic model research - even though it leads nowhere.

 

[waltky]

Researchers created a new pacemaker inside the heart...

Virus rebuilds heart's own pacemaker in animal tests
16 December 2012 - A new pacemaker has been built inside a heart by converting beating muscle into cells which can organise the organ's rhythm, US researchers report.

The heartbeat is controlled by electrical signals and if these go awry the consequences can be fatal. Scientists injected a genetically-modified virus into guinea pigs to turn part of their heart into a new, working pacemaker. The study was published in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

A human heart is made up of billions of cells, but researchers say fewer than 10,000 are responsible for controlling the heartbeat. Age and disease can lead to problems such as the heart pumping too fast or too slow - and it can even stop completely, in what is known as a cardiac arrest. The solution is an implanted battery-powered pacemaker which will jolt the heart to keep it in line.

Hearty solution

Instead a team of researchers at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute tried to restore the heart's own ability to dictate the beat by creating new pacemaker cells. They used a virus to infect heart muscle cells with a gene, called Tbx18, which is normally active when pacemaker cells are formed during normal development in an embryo.

When heart cells were infected with the virus they became smaller, thin and tapered as they acquired the "distinctive features of pacemaker cells", the report said. When the virus was injected into a region of the hearts of seven guinea pigs, five later had heartbeats which originated from their new pacemaker.

More BBC News - Virus rebuilds heart's own pacemaker in animal tests

 

[waltky]

Heart tissue regeneration gene discovery...

Gene Controls Regeneration of Heart Tissue
April 17, 2013 - Researchers have identified a gene that regulates the heart's ability to regenerate after an injury, such as a heart attack.

Scientists at the University of Texas, led by Dr. Hesham Sadek, had previously shown that a newborn mammal's heart could regenerate and repair injuries through cell division, but rapidly lost that ability as the newborn developed. They noticed that the gene called Meis1 became significantly more active in heart cells soon after birth, when the heart muscle cells stop dividing, and wondered about its role.

Model of a human heart.

Sadek's team deleted Meis1 from the hearts of newborn mice and demonstrated that the regenerative period was lengthened. The researchers were also able to re-activate the regenerative process in adult mouse hearts by removing the gene.

"Meis1 controls several genes that normally act as brakes on cell division," Sadek explains, comparing it to an on-off switch for making adult heart cells divide. The finding could provide a new approach to heart regeneration research, which currently focuses on the use of stem cells to replace damaged heart cells. Sadek says it "could introduce a new era in treatment for heart failure." The findings of Sadek and his colleagues are published online in the journal Nature.

Gene Controls Regeneration of Heart Tissue

 

[editec]

The human heart is more than merely a muscular pump.

Did you know, for example, that the heart sends more data to the brain than the brain sends to the heart?

Those of you who have ever experienced heart-break will understand what I am talking about.

So is it possible that we might be able to repair hearts using some mental power?

I think we are and always have been doing that, to be honest.

Sick of heart is not merely a mental state, it is also describing something that is truly happening IN our hearts.