Heart muscles can regenerate in some people, says study

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Some people with artificial hearts can regenerate heart muscle, according to a study, an advance that may open the door to new ways to treat and someday may also cure heart failure.

There is currently no cure for heart failure. The treatment for advanced heart failure includes a transplant, and a pump replacement via an artificial heart. Known as the left ventricular assist device, this can help the heart pump blood.

Researchers from the University of Arizona's College of Medicine in the US said that "skeletal muscle has a significant ability to regenerate after injury".

The team began the study with tissue from artificial heart patients. They included researchers from Sweden and Germany and used their own innovative method of carbon dating human heart tissue to track whether these samples contained newly generated cells.

The results, published in the journal Circulation, showed that people with these artificial hearts could regenerate muscle cells at more than six times the rate of healthy hearts.

"This is the strongest evidence we have, so far, that human heart muscle cells can actually regenerate, which really is exciting, because it solidifies the notion that there is an intrinsic capacity of the human heart to regenerate," said Hesham Sadek, director of the Tucson's Sarver Heart Center at the varsity.

The researcher explained that some artificial heart patients can remove their devices because of the reversal of symptoms. This can happen if the artificial heart provides cardiac muscles the equivalent of bed rest in a person recovering from a soccer injury.

The findings suggest it "may be possible to target the molecular pathways involved in cell division to enhance the heart's ability to regenerate," Sadek said.

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