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HowToPreventHeartDisease.com |
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Can
Heart Disease Patients Do Away Being the second biggest killer next to cancer, heart disease is one of the top 3 causes of hospitalization. Many of the heart disease patients have to undergo surgeries like cardiac bypass operation. Unfortunately, bypass operations are frequently not permanent cures for these patients and some of them will ultimately require a heart transplant that carries a much higher risk. Certainly, these patients will earnestly hope that there is new scientific breakthrough that could save them from going through various operations and help reduce the risk. Yes, their wish might be fulfilled very soon. In a year or two, a stem cell transplant method pioneered by the National Heart Centre (NHC) in Singapore might become a viable solution to help such patients avoid the heart transplant and even eliminate the need for cardiac bypass operation. Over the past 6 years, a 16-person team has been researching the project and is now looking for funding to begin human trials in one to two years. The findings were presented in September 2008 at the European Society of Cardiology Congress in Munich, Germany.
The method involves taking stem cells from the patient’s heart, cultivating them in a special solution to differentiate them into heart muscle stem cells. These differentiated cells are then transplanted back into the patient’s heart. Using stem cell therapy in the treatment of heart failure patients is not new but most of these programs are in their early phases. Based on the pre-clinical study results, NHC claims that their proprietary technology to manipulate cells is better than any other methods in the world, and believes its project has a good chance to have an early success. The stem cells donated by a total of 43 patients, who had undergone heart bypass surgeries, were transplanted into the mice under study. It was found that the heart pump action is significant in these mice. The researchers observed that these cells are very clever and can actually move by themselves by migration, and the move into areas that need them most. The conventional methods can convert only a few out of millions of whole stem cells poured into the heart, whereas the patented method employed by NHC can see some 30 percent of stem cells being converted into heart muscle cells. More importantly, NHC’s research has another potential benefit. Using its method, heart failure patients can harvest their own stem cells to be used for their own treatment. This will eliminate the need for immunosuppressant, or any other drugs that help transplant patients cope with rejection of donor tissue. It is hoped that the impending human trial will have positive news so that in the near future, heart disease patients could be spared from one operation after another and so are their pains and fears.
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