Bone marrow to save heart patients?

Patients are having their hearts rebuilt using their body's own 'master cells', scientists revealed yesterday.

Scientists used bone marrow stem cells to repair failing hearts in the first trials to indicate the technique works.

They compared two groups of heart bypass patients, one of which was treated with cells taken from their own hip bones. Six months later, the hearts of those in the stem cell group were pumping out more blood than those of patients who had surgery alone.

The results would encourage experts to 'aggressively pursue' cell-based therapies as an option for congestive heart failure, said Prof Robert Kormos, who led the study.

'It will revolutionise our approach, which is largely palliative, to one that is truly regenerative,' he added.

Researchers from Pittsburgh University studied 20 patients whose damaged heart muscle could not pump blood efficiently - a problem affecting about 650,000 Britons.

In a ten-minute procedure, half the participants had a preparation of two types of stem cell, known as CD34plus and CD45minus cells, injected into 25 to 30 areas of damaged heart muscle.

Half a year later, the hearts of those who received the cells were functioning significantly better, experts told a meeting of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery in Toronto.

Dr Amid Patel said: 'We don't know if this increase was due to the growth of new heart muscle cells resulting from the stem cell injections or whether the stem cells coaxed existing cells to come out of hibernation.'

In a separate study in Uruguay, two patients with inoperable heart failure have had their damaged heart tissue injected with stem cells.

Such treatment would offer ' significant advancement' if it could repair the heart, said the British Heart Foundation.