CHICAGO — Patients with advanced heart
disease who received an experimental stem cell therapy showed slightly improved
heart function, researchers said at a major US cardiology conference on
Saturday. The clinical trial involved 92 patients, with an average age of 63, who
were picked at random to get either a placebo or a series of injections of
their own stem cells, taken from their bone marrow, into damaged areas of their
hearts. The patients all had chronic heart disease, along with either heart
failure or angina, and their left ventricles were pumping at less than 45
percent of capacity.
All the participants in the study were
ineligible for revascularization surgery, such as coronary bypass to restore
blood flow, because their heart disease was so advanced.
Those who received the stem cell therapy
saw a small but significant boost in the heart’s ability to pump blood,
measuring the increase from the heart’s main pumping
chamber at 2.7 percent more than placebo
patients.
Study authors described the trial as the
largest to date to examine stem cell therapy as a route to repairing the heart
in patients with chronic ischemic heart disease and
left ventricular dysfunction.
“This is the kind
of information we need in order to move forward with the clinical use of stem
cell therapy,” said lead investigator Emerson Perin, director of clinical
research for cardiovascular medicine at the Texas Heart Institute.
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