Interesting Heart Research Being Done with Stem Cell Therapy

[Adam's Apple]

Please note that adult stem cells are being used in this important research, not embryonic stem cells. I have been unable to find any articles highlighting the successful use of embryonic stem cells in important research.

Last Hope for Heartache
By John Fauber, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
December 3, 2005

New gene therapy could help untreatable angina sufferers grow new blood vessels, muscle cells

http://www.jsonline.com/alive/news/dec05/375270.asp

 

[waltky]

Mebbe inna future dey'll be able to rebuild a human heart...

Scientists Rebuild Working Mouse Heart
August 14, 2013 - Scientists using human stem cells have rebuilt a working mouse heart after stripping it of all of its original cells.

A team of researchers at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Medicine first removed all of the cells from a mouse heart, a process they say takes 10 hours. The remaining “scaffold” of the heart was then repopulated with human-induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. The iPS cells were made into multipotential cardiovascular progenitor (MCP) cells. The iPS cells were harvested from fibroblast cells from a small human skin biopsy.

“This process makes MCPs, which are precursor cells that can further differentiate into three kinds of cells the heart uses, including cardiomyocytes, endothelial cells and smooth muscle cells,” said senior researcher Lei Yang, assistant professor of developmental biology at the Pittsburgh School of Medicine. “Nobody has tried using these MCPs for heart regeneration before. It turns out that the heart’s extracellular matrix – the material that is the substrate of heart scaffold – can send signals to guide the MCPs into becoming the specialized cells that are needed for proper heart function.”

A model of a human heart is shown. Scientists say they have successfully rebuilt a mouse heart using stem cells.

Promising first step

The newly rebuilt heart began to beat at a rate of 40 to 50 beats per minute within a few weeks, the researchers said. While promising, they say more work must be done “to make the heart contract strongly enough to be able to pump blood effectively, and to rebuild the heart’s electrical conduction system correctly so that the heart rate speeds up and slows down appropriately.” In the future, it might be possible to take a simple skin biopsy from a patient to derive personalized MCPs that can be used to seed a biologic scaffold and regenerate a replacement organ suitable for transplantation, Yang said. “One of our next goals is to see if it’s feasible to make a patch of human heart muscle,” he added. “We could use patches to replace a region damaged by a heart attack. That might be easier to achieve because it won’t require as many cells as a whole human-sized organ would.”

In the United States, one person dies of heart disease every 34 seconds, and more than 5 million people suffer from heart failure, meaning a reduced ability to pump blood, said Yang. “Scientists have been looking to regenerative medicine and tissue engineering approaches to find new solutions for this important problem,” Yang said. “The ability to replace a piece of tissue damaged by a heart attack, or perhaps an entire organ, could be very helpful for these patients.” The findings were published in Nature Communications.

Scientists Rebuild Working Mouse Heart

 

[waltky]

25% of deaths related to heart disease preventable...

CDC: 1 in 4 US Deaths From Heart Disease Preventable
September 03, 2013 — About one in four U.S. deaths from heart disease could be avoided with better prevention efforts and treatment, a report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

The first-of-its-kind report estimated that preventable deaths from heart disease in 2010 amounted to as many as 200,000 individuals who might have been spared an early death from a heart attack or stroke. CDC officials said that the launch of President Barack Obama's healthcare reform law in 2014, which is expected to provide better access to treatment for millions of uninsured Americans and routine coverage of preventive screenings, could help bring those numbers down. “Beginning in October, the health insurance marketplaces will provide a new way for people to get health insurance so more patients have access to quality health insurance and coverage beginning as early as January 2014,” CDC Director Dr Tom Frieden said in a conference call with reporters.

Overall, the rate of preventable deaths from heart disease and stroke - those that could have been avoided by treating high blood pressure and cholesterol and by discouraging smoking - fell nearly 30 percent between 2001 and 2010. But there were widespread differences in rates by age, location, race and gender. “While those who are age 65 to 74 still have the greatest rate of heart attack and stroke, more than half of the preventable deaths - about 6 in 10 - happen in people under the age of 65,” Frieden said. Frieden said preventable deaths declined much faster in people aged 65 to 74, which “may well be because they have access to health insurance through their Medicare coverage,” the U.S. health insurance program for the elderly.

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, accounting for nearly 800,000 deaths a year, or about 30 percent of all U.S. deaths. The report looked at preventable deaths from heart disease and stroke defined as those that occurred in people under age 75 that could have been prevented by more effective public health measures, lifestyle changes or medical care. It found that the state in which a person lives plays a major role in the rate of avoidable deaths from heart disease. This rate ranged from 36.3 deaths per 100,000 population in Minnesota to 99.6 deaths per 100,000 in the District of Columbia. By U.S. county, the highest rates of avoidable deaths in 2010 were mostly in southern Appalachian region and much of Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana and Oklahoma.

The lowest rates of such deaths were in the West, Midwest, and Northeastern regions of the United States. Men were more than twice as likely as women to die from heart disease and strokes that could have been prevented by treating high blood pressure and cholesterol and through smoking prevention efforts. The rate of such deaths for U.S. men in 2010 was 83.7 per 100,000 in 2010 compared with 39.6 per 100,000 for women. The report found blacks were twice as likely as whites to die from preventable heart disease and strokes. In 2010, the rate of avoidable deaths from heart disease and stroke in black men was about 80 percent higher than that of white males and black females.

CDC: 1 in 4 US Deaths From Heart Disease Preventable

 

[waltky]

Stem cell therapy may help reduce the number of deaths in heart patients...

Stem Therapy May Improve Survival of Heart Patients
May 02, 2014 ~ A new review of previous scientific studies has concluded that stem cell therapy may help reduce the number of deaths in heart patients.

The Cochrane Heart Review Group analyzed data from studies involving just over 1,200 patients in 23 randomized, controlled trials. The group's report on the potential benefits of stem cell heart repair was published online on April 29 in The Cochrane Library. The Cochrane Reviews are systematic assessments of evidence-based research into human health care and health policy.

There were fewer deaths among heart patients receiving stem cell therapy in addition to standard treatment, compared to patients who were treated with traditional therapies alone or with a placebo. Stem cells are primitive master cells that, under the right conditions, can turn into any cell in the body.

An Aastrom Biosciences production assistant works at 'priming' cell cassettes for incubation in the clean room laboratory at their headquarters in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

The therapy also reduced the chances that patients, with improved heart function, had to be readmitted to the hospital. The review noted that stem cell therapy could possibly reduce the number of deaths after one year, but the results of larger clinical trials are needed.

The stem cells are taken from a patient’s own bone marrow and injected into the hearts of patients with ischemic heart disease and congestive heart failure, repairing damaged cardiac tissue. Dr. Enca Martin-Rendon, author of the review in Britain, said, “This is encouraging evidence that stem cell therapy has benefits for heart disease patients.” However, Martin-Rendon noted it is difficult to come to any concrete conclusions until larger clinical trials are carried out.

Stem Therapy May Improve Survival of Heart Patients

See also:

CDC: Thousands of Premature Deaths are Preventable
May 02, 2014 ~ Five things kill the majority of the nearly 900,000 Americans who die prematurely each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

Premature death, as defined by the CDC, is under 80 years old, given that the average life expectancy in the U.S. is 79. The five top killers are heart disease, cancer, chronic lower respiratory disease, stroke and unintentional injuries. These accounted for 63 percent of all U.S. deaths in 2010 though the rates vary greatly by state. Of those deaths, the CDC says 20 to 40 percent could be prevented if people had access to the top preventative care available in the country for each specific cause of death, a best-case scenario of sorts. The best-case scenario was calculated by calculating the mortality rates of the five top causes of death in all the U.S. states. The three states with the lowest mortality for each of the five top killers was then averaged.

Dr. Keith Melancon, right, Georgetown's kidney transplant director, performs the surgery to harvest the kidney from donor Tom Otten, at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington.

The CDC study estimated the number of avoidable, premature deaths for each cause would be as follows:

* 34 percent of premature deaths from heart diseases, potentially extending about 92,000 lives
* 21 percent of premature cancer deaths, potentially extending about 84,500 lives
* 39 percent of premature deaths from chronic lower respiratory diseases, potentially extending about 29,000 lives
* 33 percent of premature stroke deaths, potentially extending about 17,000 lives
* 39 percent of premature deaths from unintentional injuries, potentially extending about 37,000 lives

Those numbers, the CDC said, could not be added together because some people might recover from a heart attack only to later die from cancer, for example. The CDC data covered 2008 to 2010. “As a doctor, it is heartbreaking to lose just one patient to a preventable disease or injury – and it is that much more poignant as the director of the nation’s public health agency to know that far more than a hundred thousand deaths each year are preventable,” said CDC director Tom Frieden, MD in a statement. The southern states, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee, saw between 28 and 33 percent of preventable premature deaths, the CDC said. "This data is yet another demonstration that when it comes to health in this country, your longevity and health are more determined by your [postal] code than they are by your genetic code," Frieden said during a news conference.

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