骨髓干细胞治疗心脏病 减低心室肥大的程度
心脏病的发生往往是由于提供心肌细胞的血管受到阻塞，减少氧气的供应，造成心肌细胞的坏死，并进而增加心脏负担产生心室肥大的现象。
迈阿密大学的医学博士Joshua M. Hare和其研究团队针对八位患有心肌梗塞的病患做临床试验，利用病患的骨髓干细胞，经心导管直接植入受损的心脏组织，经一年的追踪，发现心室肥大的范围有缩小，并有良好的收缩现象。这项发现已发表在美国心脏协会线上期刊－血液循还研究
科学家目前也正进行研究，利用同样富含造血干细胞的脐带血，胎盘和周边血，来进行心肌修补的试验。
Stem Cells Can Bring Heart Back To Normal After Attack
A heart attack takes place when blood vessels that supply blood to the heart are blocked, preventing enough oxygen from getting to the organ. The heart muscle dies or becomes permanently damaged, tissue is scarred and the heart becomes enlarged. Now for survivors of cardiac arrest, stem cell injections afterwards can help enlarged hearts recover in size and function.
Joshua M. Hare, MD, of the University of Miami, and colleagues reviewed the treatment of eight patients at an average of 5.7 years after myocardial infarction (MI) didn't show significant ejection fraction gains, but the improvements in cardiac chamber dimensions and contractility persisted through the end of one year of follow-up.
Function of the heart muscle in the treated region showed signs of improvement by three months. The infarct region, or area of tissue damage, dropped 18.3% in size by one year after stem cell injections.
By 12 months after the injections, regional contractility as measured by peak eulerian circumferential strain had returned to the level of the border zone around the infarct. Reverse remodeling in left ventricular chamber dimensions took longer, gaining significance only at six months post-treatment.
Stem cells have a unique feature in that they can be coaxed into developing into some or all of the 220 cell types found in the human body. Of the three types of stem cells, embryonic stem cells have the greatest potential in that they can theoretically become any of the 220 cell types. Adult stem cells are less useful in that they have already started to specialize and can only become one of a few cell types. Induced pluripotent stem cells are specially treated cells that can be processed to behave somewhat like embryonic stem cells.
Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), used in this research, are multipotent stem cells that give rise to all the blood cell types including myeloid (monocytes and macrophages, neutrophils, basophils, eosinophils, erythrocytes, megakaryocytes/platelets, dendritic cells), and lymphoid lineages (T-cells, B-cells, NK-cells).
HSCs are found in the bone marrow of adults, which includes femurs, hip, ribs, sternum, and other bones. Cells can be obtained directly by removal from the hip using a needle and syringe, or from the blood following pre-treatment. Other sources for clinical and scientific use include umbilical cord blood, placenta and mobilized peripheral blood.
Source: The American Heart Association Circulation Research