(NewsNation) — Stem cell therapy may be able to reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke in some patients with chronic heart failure, according to a study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
The study found that heart attack and stroke risks could be reduced by 58% by a single injection of stem cells directly into an inflamed heart.
According to the CDC, more than six million Americans experience heart failure, which means their heart doesn’t pump enough blood for their body. Most of the time, heart failure is caused by other medical conditions like high blood pressure or inflammation.
Researchers from the study said that stem cell therapy can treat the inflammation that leads to heart failure.
The study consisted of 565 randomized heart failure patients ranging from 18 to 80 years old.
About half of the patients underwent cardiac mapping and trans-endocardial delivery, which means they received mesenchymal precursor cells injections. The mesenchymal precursor cells have anti-inflammatory properties and are injected directly into the heart through a catheter.
The other half of the patients, acting as the control group, received sham mapping and sham cell-delivery procedures — meaning they received a placebo, not the real treatment. Due to post-randomization disqualifying events, 28 of the 565 patients could not undergo the procedure.
NewsNation medical contributor Dr. Dave Montgomery, a board-certified cardiologist, said the scientific community has been looking at whether or not stem cells could be used to regenerate and rejuvenate organs for decades.
Montgomery said that this particular study was encouraging because it looked at directly injecting stem cells that came from living individuals’ bone marrow — which evaded controversy about the origin of the stem cells — to see if it could help the heart regenerate.
“The 30,000-foot view question is, can we restore the function of hearts that are failing — that are not pumping properly — for any number of reasons?” he said.
By injecting the patients with stem cells directly into the heart, and following up with them for a year, researchers were able to discover that the heart was able to contract a little bit better. Researchers, however, were not able to achieve any of the heart failure outcomes that they were initially looking for.
“The surprising part was that it also decreased the risk of stroke, as well as heart attack,” Montgomery said. “They showed that the stem cell somehow reduced inflammation all throughout the body. And as we know, inflammation is one of the causes of heart attack and stroke.”