New Genetic Therapy Can Heal Damage of Heart Attack

By: | May 17th, 2019

Image courtesy Pixabay

According to WHO (World Health Organization), worldwide over 23 million people are affected with the problem of Heart attack. Most common cause of heart failure is found to be the sudden blocking of one of the cardiac coronary arteries. Currently, the survivors of heart attacks are left with the patches of scarring which can lead to heart failure in future as well.

In a big breakthrough, researchers from King’s College London have found the therapy that could repair deadly heart attack damage.

This therapy can restart the growth process which ends when we are babies

Scientists are hopeful this therapy may help the heart to repair the damage and become healthy again.

After heart attack, scientists plan to deliver a small piece of genetic material, called microRNA-199 to the heart. Scientists hope that injecting this gene will completely recover the cardiac function within weeks of heart attack.

Researchers successfully did this experiment on pigs. They injected the gene into the hearts of pigs, which resulted in the almost complete recovery of cardiac function within a month of a heart attack.

Lead researcher on the study, Professor Mauro Giacca, said, “It is a very exciting moment for the field. After so many unsuccessful attempts at regenerating the heart using stem cells, which all have failed so far, for the first time we see real cardiac repair in a large animal.”

Nidhi Goyal

Nidhi is a gold medalist Post Graduate in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences.

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