Researchers Reverse Heart Damage in Rabbits

Researchers at Duke University Medical Center recently reported that they had successfully used a genetically engineered treatment to reverse the damage from congestive heart failure in rabbits. The results were reported in a paper published in Circulation.

The team had previously used a genetically engineered treatment to prevent heart damage to rabbits afflicted with congestive heart failure. In patients suffering from congestive heart failure, whether they be rabbits or human beings, the cells in the heart lose their flexibility and no longer contract and expand properly. As a result, blood doesn’t circulate efficiently and the body floods the heart with an adrenaline compound that forces to pump faster to compensate, which leads to heart failure in the long term.

The Duke team modified the common cold virus to carry a copy of a gene which stops this adrenaline compound from being released and thereby forestalling heart failure. In the experiments with rabbits, a week after suffering heart failure, the cells in the heart were functioning normally.

If this approached works in human beings, it could dramatically extend the life expectancy of those suffering from congestive heart failure. Lead researcher Walter Koch told The BBC,

If our work continues to progress as it has, we anticipate being able to possibly test this approach in a certain group of patients within three years. We would like to try it first on severe heart failure patients in the hospital awaiting a heart transplant to see if we could reverse the dysfunctioning part of the heart.

Source:

Heart failure damage reversed. The BBC, March 6, 2001.

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