Stem Cells Aid in Heart Disease Treatment

Stem cells derived from a patient with an inherited heart disease known as QT syndrome could help test specific treatments for the disease, says scientists.

Researchers from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology turned the skin cell into a type of all-purpose stem cell called induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPSCs.

Congenital Heart Disease – Septal Defects
Heart diseases that are present at birth are called “ Congenital heart diseases”.

Prof. Lior Gepstein then coaxed these stem cells - which have the capability to become any cell type in the human body - to become cardiac cells.

The newborn heart cells showed an abnormal electrical activity in the laboratory, recapitulating clinical presentation of the long QT syndrome patient, making them useful for studying this potentially lethal disorder.

The research team was then able to test several types of drugs to find out how they might aggravate or alleviate long QT symptoms in the cells.

Animation of heart attack symptoms
Heart attack can cause symptoms such as Chest pain or discomfort, Shortness of breath and pain in neck, back, arm, or shoulder and is due to blockage of blood supply to the heart muscles

The study can help scientists learn more about how a disease like long QT syndrome works at the cellular level, Gepstein said.

But it also offers a glimpse at the future of personalized medicine, where a person's own cells can be used to determine which treatments might work best-or should be avoided-for a particular condition.

Quiz on Healthy Heart
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Long QT syndrome is a disease that affects the heart's ability to recharge itself after each heartbeat. In people with the disease, the heart's electrical system takes longer than normal to recover between each beat.

This disturbance can cause a fast, chaotic heartbeat that triggers fainting, seizures, and can result "in sudden death in otherwise healthy young individuals," according to Gepstein.

Congestive Heart Failure (Congestive Cardiac Failure) Current Management
Congestive heart failure (CHF) is a condition in which the heart fails to work adequately as a pump that can deliver oxygen rich blood to the body.

Some patients acquire the disorder after taking certain medications, but the disease is also caused by an array of inherited genetic defects that affect the proteins involved in recharging the heart.

In the study, Gepstein and colleagues used skin cells from a 28-year old woman with type-2 LQTS, which is caused by a single genetic mutation.

The results appear in the January 16 issue of the journal Nature.

Source-ANI