The Karolinska Institute in Sweden published, on November 21, 2024, a new study in the very serious cardiology journal Circulation. This reveals a hitherto unsuspected regeneration potential of heart cells.
« In the existing data we do not find an explanation for this effect, but we will now continue to study this process at the cellular and molecular level “, says Olaf Bergmann, senior researcher at the Department of Cellular and Molecular Biology, in a press release from the Karolinska Institutet. He designed and supervised a study on the regeneration of cardiac muscle cells, called cardiomyocytes, published in the journal of cardiology Circulation November 21, 2024.
Let’s start at the beginning… The study focuses on patients with heart failure. But, what exactly is it? This is a disease in which the heart muscle is unable to normally propel blood through the body.
Heart failure is a common illness which most often results from a heart attack or high blood pressure.
It’s a well-known fact that a broken heart is hard to mend… Literally speaking, anyway. In fact, the rate of regeneration of cardiac cells in a healthy adult heart is only 0.5% per year. For hearts with heart failure, this rate is even lower.
The LVAD, a pump to help the heart
So, to help these failing hearts, the standard treatment for severe heart failure is LVAD (Left Ventricular Assisted Device). It is a pump implanted in the left ventricle, which helps the heart to propel blood throughout the body.
Quite surprisingly, some of the patients treated with this pump show a marked improvement in their heart function and structure… to the point where removal of the LVAD can be considered. However, until now, researchers did not know whether this improvement involved cardiomyocyte regeneration.
The age of cardiac muscle cells
In Bergmann’s study, researchers determined the age of cells based on a method that measured the radioactive carbon present in them. This method was developed by Jonas Frisén, professor and stem cell researcher at the Karolinska Institutet.
Bergmann and his team were able to observe that, in LVAD patients with improved cardiac function, the rate of cardiomyocyte renewal is approximately 6 times higher compared to healthy subjects. “The results suggest there may be a hidden key to jump-starting the heart’s repair mechanism itself,” he explains in the Institute’s press release.
This discovery opens new perspectives and brings new therapeutic hopes. Further studies still need to be carried out to understand the precise molecular mechanism behind this phenomenon, which would allow the development of drugs that stimulate cardiac regeneration. And who knows? Maybe science will actually find a way to mend broken hearts.
