Muscle Cell Grafts Keep Broken Hearts from Breaking Rhythm
Researchers have made a major advance in efforts to regenerate damaged hearts. They discovered that transplanted heart muscle cells, grown from stem cells, electrically couple and beat in sync with the heart’s own mucle.
The grafts also reduced the incidence of arrhythmias (irregular heart rhythms) in a guinea pig model of myocardial infarction (commonly known as a heart attack).
This finding from University of Washington-led research is reported in the Aug. 5 issue of Nature. (more…)