Washington [USA], January 22 (HBTV): A research team at the University of Arizona College of Medicine–Tucson's Sarver Heart Center found that a subset of artificial heart patients can regenerate heart muscle, opening possibilities for new ways to treat and potentially cure heart failure.

The results of the research, co-led by a physician-scientist, were published in the journal Circulation.

Comparing the repair of skeletal muscles to heart muscles, Hesham Sadek, MD, PhD, director of the Sarver Heart Center and chief of the Division of Cardiology at the University of Arizona College of Medicine–Tucson's Department of Medicine, noted that when heart muscle is injured, it does not grow back. 'We have nothing to reverse heart muscle loss,' he said.

Sadek led a collaboration between international experts to investigate whether heart muscles can regenerate. The study was funded through a grant by the Leducq Foundation Transatlantic Networks of Excellence Program.

The project began with tissue from artificial heart patients provided by colleagues at the University of Utah Health and School of Medicine, led by Stavros Drakos, MD, PhD, a pioneer in left ventricular assist device-mediated recovery.

Jonas Frisen, MD, PhD, and Olaf Bergmann, MD, PhD, of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, led teams in Sweden and Germany, using their innovative method of carbon dating human heart tissue to track whether these samples contained newly generated cells.

The investigators found that patients with artificial hearts regenerated 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,' Sadek said.

Earlier, Sadek published a paper in Science showing that while heart muscle cells actively divide in utero, they stop dividing shortly after birth to devote their energy to pumping blood through the body nonstop, with no time for breaks.

In 2014, he published evidence of cell division in patients with artificial hearts, hinting that their heart muscle cells might have been regenerating.

'The pump pushes blood into the aorta, bypassing the heart,' he said. 'The heart is essentially resting.'

Sadek's previous studies indicated that this rest might be beneficial for heart muscle cells, but he needed to design an experiment to determine whether patients with artificial hearts were actually regenerating muscle.

'Irrefutable evidence of heart muscle regeneration has never been shown before in humans,' he said. 'This study provided direct evidence.'

However, Sadek wants to understand why only 25 percent of patients responded with muscle regeneration.

'It's not clear why some patients respond and some don't, but it's very clear that the ones who respond have the ability to regenerate heart muscle,' he said.

Sadek believes that in the future, mechanical hearts will no longer be relied upon as therapy. With this study, he hopes to enable the regeneration of heart muscles in the future. (ANI)