In a new study, researchers found that a new treatment for ‘silent’ heart attack survivors may make their hearts stronger and repair scar tissue.
The therapy can also lower the chance of sudden death from dangerous heart rhythms known as ventricular tachycardia, a leading killer among those who have suffered heart attacks.
The treatment is developed for patients who don’t know they’ve suffered a heart attack.
The research was conducted by a team at the University of Sydney and elsewhere.
Patients with a ‘silent’ heart attack either didn’t know they were having a heart attack or had a delay coming to the hospital.
They live with very damaged hearts from a very large heart attack and they don’t have a lot of hope. There are not many treatments that can regenerate heart function.
The current study of pigs given protein therapy after heart attacks found it lifted the animals’ chances of survival by 40%.
The protein, derived from human blood, also made the damaged heart tissue grow back stronger and better able to carry blood vessels.
The study used pigs because bigs have hearts of a similar size to human hearts and beat at a similar rate.
The team says while there were good current heart-attack treatments, this offered hope for many who suffer irreversible damage from undetected heart attacks.
In those cases, the scar tissue is weak and can lead to heart failure, with few drugs able to help.
The current method may provide great benefits to these patients.
The method could also regenerate other kinds of scar tissue, with implications for burns victims and those with other kinds of organ damage.
The researchers hope to commercialize their findings to begin human trials.
One author of the study is Associate Professor James Chong, from the University of Sydney’s Westmead Institute of Medical Research.
The study is published in Science Translational Medicine.
Copyright © 2019 Knowridge Science Report. All rights reserved.
