A research team from the University of Arizona has found that patients with artificial hearts can regenerate heart muscle that was previously completely damaged.
Dr. Hisham Sadiq, who led the research team, said the discovery could open the door to new treatments and perhaps one day cure heart failure.
The findings were published in the journal Circulation.
Skeletal muscle has a remarkable ability to regenerate after injury. If you’re playing football and you injure a muscle, resting it will heal it.
But when heart muscle is injured, it doesn’t heal. We don’t have anything to reverse the damage to heart muscle.
Hisham Sadiq led a team of international experts to investigate whether heart muscle could be regenerated using a technique. The study was funded by the Leduc Foundation Transatlantic Networks of Excellence program.
The researchers found that patients with artificial hearts could regenerate muscle cells at a rate six times faster than those with healthy hearts.
