Here is the latest treatment for people with chronic heart failure: a nurse draws blood from the patient, runs that blood through a machine, superheating and “stressing” the blood, and then, injects it back into the patient.
It sounds like science fiction – and too simple to be true. But that is exactly what cardiologists at the University of Calgary Faculty of Medicine are doing in a clinical trial launched today.
The ACCLAIM study is a double-blind, Phase 3 clinical trial enrolling 2000 people with chronic heart failure across North America. Clinical research sites include Sacramento, Montreal, Dallas, Cleveland, Boston, and Calgary.
“We cardiologists have recently come to understand that inflammation plays a pivotal role in the development and progression of heart failure,” says Dr. Debra Isaac, associate clinical professor of cardiology, U of C Faculty of Medicine. “This procedure targets chronic inflammation by kick-starting the immune system’s own anti-inflammatory response.”
The procedure, known as immune modulation therapy, involves the following: a nurse takes 10 cc’s (about 2 teaspoons) of blood from a patient, and puts that blood into a specialized machine that applies stresses: heat, oxidation, and UV light. When white blood cells experience this stress, they begin to die. The nurse then re-injects that blood back into the patient’s leg muscle. The dying cells trigger an anti-inflammatory reaction in the patient, inducing his/her body to boost its own anti-inflammatory processes.