Adult Stem Cells Used to Heal Hearts

It is true, adult stem therapy is now used routinely to heal the hearts of individuals with end-stage heart disease:

After the first treatment, I started to get better immediately. They take injections from the bone marrow in my hipbone. When they have enough cells they take it to a lab for "witchcraft," as I call it. I don't really know what they do there but two hours later I have a treatment that is a bit like an angiogram. Instead of using a stent, though, they inject the cells into the arteries in my heart.

Basically, the heart regrows the dead tissue. Even with so much scarring, my heart is pretty good now. I can go cruising, travel to America where I spend about six months of the year and walk a lot further than previously. I still can't play 18 holes of golf; I do nine instead now.

Cardiologists who have performed the procedure in Europe, South America and Japan using adult human stem cells have reported Lazarus-like improvements in their patients, some of whom have even returned from near-permanent hospitalization to their previous, normal lives. In the last year the therapy has caught on in the United States, too, with similar early results. The Food and Drug Administration, at first wary, has started approving more trials (mostly using stem cells from patients' own bodies rather than controversial embryonic stem cells). In the next few years several hundred American patients who have run out of conventional options will enroll, their hopes renewed.

Posted October 13, 2005 7:39 PM