Heart muscle can regenerate after failure in some people with artificial hearts, an international research team has found.The team co-led by a physician-scientist at the University of Arizona College of Medicine â Tucsonâs Sarver Heart Center in the US found that a subset of artificial heart patients can regenerate heart muscle, which may open the door to new ways to treat and perhaps someday cure heart failure.
There is no cure for heart failure, though medications can slow its progression. The only treatment for advanced heart failure, other than a transplant, is pump replacement through an artificial heart, called a left ventricular assist device, which can help the heart pump blood.
Skeletal muscle has a significant ability to regenerate after injury. If youâre playing soccer and you tear a muscle, you need to rest it, and it heals,â said Hesham Sadek, chief of the Division of Cardiology at the University of Arizona College of Medicine â Tucsonâs Department of Medicine.
âWhen a heart muscle is injured, it doesnât grow back. We have nothing to reverse heart muscle loss,â Sadek said in a paper published in the journal Circulation.
Sadek led a collaboration between international experts to investigate whether heart muscles can regenerate.
The project began with tissue from artificial heart patients provided by colleagues at the University of Utah Health and School of Medicine led by Stavros Drakos, a pioneer in left ventricular assist device-mediated recovery.