Along with findings of this study, know what stem cells are, where they are found and why they are essential for human health.
Heart stem cells that might repair the heart muscle after a heart attack do not exist in adults, say researchers after two decades of study.
Found in the human body’s organs, tissues, blood (even in the umbilical cord when a baby is born and menstrual blood) and immune system, the miraculous micro-organisms called stem cells have the potential to cure illnesses ranging from diabetes to Parkinson’s disease and even spinal damage.
This remarkable ability indisputably makes them precious in medical treatment.
How researchers divided heart cells
Researchers from the Hubrecht Institute in the Netherlands, the Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon in France and the Francis Crick Institute in London, generated a cell-by-cell map of all dividing cardiac cells before and after a heart attack using advanced molecular and genetic technologies.
What they found out about heart muscles
- They recorded many types of cells divide upon damage in the mouse heart, but that none of these are capable of generating new heart muscle
- During a heart attack or myocardial infarction, the blood supply to part of the heart muscle is cut off, and those muscles might die
HISTORY OF CARDIAC STEM CELLS
Fibroblasts and cardiac muscle
The researchers also found that connective tissue cells known as fibroblasts, intermingled with heart muscle cells, would respond vigorously to a myocardial infarction by undergoing multiple cell divisions.
Those fibroblasts in mice can produce scar tissue that replaces the lost cardiac muscle and holds together the congested area, but contains no muscle to improve the pump function of the heart, according to the study.
However, the scar tissue formation has its own function.
When the formation is blocked, the mice suffer from acute cardiac rupture.
Also read | Stem Cell Research: All about the lucrative career option for medical science lovers
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