A new study has found that giving stem cell therapy to heart attack patients with weak heart function may help prevent heart failure and reduce the number of hospital visits.
The results were published in The BMJ and offer hope for better treatment after heart attacks.
Heart attacks can damage the heart muscle and make it harder for the heart to pump blood properly. Even though treatments for heart attacks have improved and more people are surviving, many still develop heart failure later on. Scientists have been exploring stem cell therapy as a way to help the heart heal, but more evidence was needed to prove it works.
This new study looked at 396 patients aged between 57 and 59 in Iran. All of them had their first heart attack and had damaged heart muscles with reduced pumping strength. None of them had heart problems before the heart attack.
Out of the 396 patients, 136 received a special kind of stem cell therapy along with standard care. The stem cells came from Wharton’s jelly—a substance found in the umbilical cord. These cells were delivered directly into the heart’s blood vessels 3 to 7 days after the heart attack. The remaining 260 patients received standard care without the stem cells.
Doctors followed these patients for nearly three years to see how they were doing. They considered factors like age, gender, smoking, weight, diabetes, and kidney health.
The results showed that patients who received the stem cell treatment were less likely to develop heart failure. They also had fewer hospital stays due to heart failure and fewer cases of heart-related death or being readmitted for another heart attack or heart failure.
Specifically, those who got stem cells had heart failure rates of 2.77 per 100 person years, compared to 6.48 in the control group. Hospital readmissions for heart failure were 0.92 compared to 4.20 per 100 person years.
However, the stem cell therapy didn’t make a big difference in deaths from any cause, readmissions for another heart attack, or cardiovascular deaths. But by six months after treatment, patients who received stem cells had much better heart function compared to those who didn’t.
The study was large and tracked patients for a long time, which makes the results more reliable. Still, there were some limitations. The study wasn’t double-blinded, meaning the doctors knew who received the stem cells. Also, they didn’t measure heart failure markers in the blood or look closely at how the treatment affected heart tissue.
Despite these limitations, the results are encouraging. Stem cell therapy, when added to regular care, may help protect the heart and reduce future problems for patients who have had a major heart attack.
More research is needed to confirm these results and to better understand how the stem cells work inside the heart. Scientists also hope to find ways to improve the therapy and make it more widely available in the future.
If you care about heart health, please read studies about how vitamin D influences cholesterol levels, and what we know about egg intake and heart disease.
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The study is published in The BMJ.
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