Scientists Just Proved For The First Time That Human Hearts Can Repair Themselves After A Heart Attack

For decades, medicine has operated on a widely accepted assumption: when a heart attack destroys heart muscle cells, they are gone permanently, replaced by scar tissue, with no hope of natural repair. A landmark study from the University of Sydney, the Baird Institute, and the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital has now overturned that assumption for the first time in human patients, demonstrating that heart muscle cells do in fact begin to regrow and divide after a heart attack, a process previously observed only in mice. The researchers collected living tissue samples directly from the hearts of patients who had recently experienced heart attacks, a breakthrough technique in itself that allowed them to study the human heart's response in real time rather than in postmortem tissue. What they found was that the heart was actively dividing muscle cells in the damaged areas, a biological response to injury that had simply never been detected before.

The study, published in the journal Circulation Research, found that a heart attack can destroy up to a third of a heart's cells, and while the regeneration occurring naturally is not enough on its own to prevent the damage that leads to heart failure, the finding opens a clear scientific direction: if the heart is already trying to repair itself, researchers can potentially develop treatments that amplify and accelerate that process. The team also identified specific proteins involved in driving this cell division, giving scientists a concrete molecular target to work with. The lead author said that until now medicine had assumed damaged areas were irreparably lost, leaving the heart less able to pump blood to the body's organs, and that this discovery fundamentally changes what researchers believe is possible. The goal, the senior author said, is ultimately to use this finding to make new heart cells that can reverse heart failure entirely.

Source:https://scitechdaily.com/world-first-study-reveals-human-hearts-can-regenerate-after-a-heart-attack/