Italian researchers are using stem cells repair hearts damaged by heart attacks .

Turin University heart specialist Sebastiano Marra said the stem cells produced by hormone injections “rush to the site of the damage like ambulances to an emergency scene”.

In this new technique, hormones called cytochines are injected into the body during the 24 hours after emergency heart surgery and immediately spur the production of stem cells in spinal fluid .

“The acute inflammation of the heart attracts the stem cells whose role in the body is to repair cardiac tissue,” said Marra, who operated on the patients at Turin’s Molinette Hospital .

Tests on eight patients who were operated on immediately after a heart attack have produced “amazing” results, he said .

“They were soon back on their bicycles or going to swimming pools.” Compared to experimental methods used so far, the Turin technique is far less invasive, Marra continued .

In the current technique, researchers extract stem cells from spinal fluid, boost them in the laboratory, and inject them back into the heart, a procedure which is extremely costly as well as somewhat risky.

The new technique is much less risky because there are no tricky heart injections as the hormones jabs can take place in any part of the body .

“The costs are really low, the risks are next-to-nil and the benefits very high,” Marra said .

The study will be published next month in a European journal of heart surgeRy, Eurointervention.

The technique will be presented for the first time on Friday at a cardiology conference organised by Molinette hospital and America’s Mayo Clinic .

Link