A new study has found that an extract derived from bone marrow cells is as effective as therapy using bone marrow stem cells for improving cardiac function after a heart attack.
The study was conducted in mice using a novel stem cell delivery method developed by researchers to show that the extract from bone marrow cells is as beneficial to cardiac function as are intact, whole cells.
Both the cell and cell extract therapies resulted in the presence of more blood vessels and less cardiac cell death, or apoptosis, than no therapy.
The study also showed that heart function benefitted despite the finding that few of the injected cells remained in the heart at one month after therapy.
"Peer-reviewed medical literature is controversial as to whether bone marrow cells differentiate into cardiomyocytes, or cardiac muscle cells, but there is general agreement that stem cell therapy with these cells results in some level of functional improvement after a heart attack. The exact mechanism for this is not yet clear,” said Yerem Yeghiazarians, MD, study author, cardiologist and director of UCSF's Translational Cardiac Stem Cell Development Program.
“Our results confirm that whole cells are not necessarily required in order to see the beneficial effects of bone marrow cell therapy," Yeghiazarians added.
Researchers are investigating these new therapies to improve cardiac function after heart attack in an effort to prevent heart failure.
"Current therapies improve symptoms but do not replace scar tissue. Our hope is to use stem cells to decrease the scar, minimise the loss of cardiac muscle and maintain or even improve the cardiac function after a heart attack," Yeghiazarians said.
The researchers are conducting further studies to evaluate bone marrow cell and extract therapies in order to identify the proteins and factors within the extract and gain insight into the possible mechanisms of cardiac functional improvement.
The findings were published online and in the July 2009 issue of the Journal of Molecular Therapy.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Bone marrow extract therapy after Heart attack helpful
The study was conducted in mice using a novel stem cell delivery method developed by researchers to show that the extract from bone marrow cells is as beneficial to cardiac function as are intact, whole cells.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Breastfeeding Moms less likely to develop heart attacks
It is well-known that breastfeeding is important for babies' health, but a study has now suggested that it is important for mothers' health as well.
"The longer a mother nurses her baWomen who had breastfed their babies for more than a year were 10 per cent less likely to have had a heart attack, stroke, or developed heart disease than women who had never breastfed.by, the better for both of them," said Eleanor Bimla Schwarz, who lead the study at the University of Pittsburgh in the US.
"Our study provides another good reason for workplace policies to encourage women to breastfeed their infants," underlined Dr Schwarz, assistant professor of medicine, epidemiology, and obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at Pittsburgh.
According to the study, published in the May issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology, the longer women breastfeed, the lower their risk of heart attacks, strokes and cardiovascular disease.
Postmenopausal women who breastfed for at least one month had lower rates of diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol, all known to cause heart disease, according to the findings, which were based on 139,681 postmenopausal women enrolled in the Women's Health Initiative study of chronic disease, initiated in 1994.
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