Results of a randomised trial in this week’s issue of THE LANCET suggest that the transfer of adult stem cells derived from bone marrow could improve cardiac functioning after heart attack.
Evidence is emerging that adult stem cells from bone marrow have therapeutic potential for restoring cardiac cells among people who have had heart attack. Helmut Drexler (University of Freiburg, Germany) and colleagues assessed whether the transfer of patients’ own bone-marrow cells could improve functioning of the left ventricle of the heart 6 months after treatment.
60 patients who had undergone successful percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI; balloon angioplasty and coronary stenting) to restore coronary artery bloodflow took part in the study. Half were given bone marrow stem-cell transfer 5 days after PCI, the other half were given optimum medical therapy. Patients who had been given stem-cell transfer had around a 7% improvement in left-ventricular function compared with only a 0.7% increase for patients given medical therapy.
Dr Drexler comments: “Our results lend support to the concept that autologous bone-marrow cells can be used to enhance left-ventricular functional recovery in patients after acute myocardial infarction. Larger trials are needed to address the effect of bone-marrow cell transfer on clinical endpoints such as the incidence of heart failure and survival.”