Single injection REPAIRS heart attack damage, study shows
- Patients developed stronger heart muscles after being injected with a protein
- Cardiovascular disease kills one person every three minutes
- The breakthrough could potentially save the NHS billions a year
Claudia Tanner For Mailonline
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Ground-breaking research has found that a single injection could repair damaged hearts – offering hope for patients who suffer a heart attack.
In a world first, researchers in Ireland found that patients who had experienced large heart attacks developed stronger heart muscles after being injected with low doses of a protein called insulin-like growth factor (IGF1).
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) claims the life of one person every three minutes. It kills more than one in four people in the UK, according to the British Heart Foundation.
As well as saving many lives, the new treatment could save the NHS a small fortune – CVD is estimated to cost up to £11 billion each year.
Cardiovascular disease is one of the main causes of death and disability in the UK, but it can often largely be prevented with a healthy lifestyle
Professor Noel Caplice from University College Cork, who led the trial, said: ‘This pilot trial is the first of its kind worldwide showing that single injection of low dose IGF1 is safe and can improve cardiac repair after a large heart attack.
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‘We hope that these findings can be replicated in potentially larger trials of many hundred subjects in the future.
Professor Noel Caplice led the groundbreaking research at University College Cork
‘A significant minority of our patients currently remain unwell after a large heart attack despite best clinical practice and we are excited by the possibility that cardiac repair therapy may help these patients.’
When a heart attack occurs, damage can occur because the heart muscle has lost blood supply and it suffers injury..
Around 20 per cent of heart attack victims experience ongoing difficulties – even after current therapies – as a result of lasting damage to the heart muscle.
Heart failure has a poor prognosis: 30 to 40 per cent of patients diagnosed die within a year, say the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE).
In the Irish trial, which involved 47 people, two different low doses of a protein called insulin-like growth factor (IGF1) were injected into patients’ hearts, while others received a placebo.
The patients who received a higher dose were found to have had ‘improved remodelling of their heart muscle’ in follow-up examinations two months later.
Prof Caplice added: ‘After a heart attack, scar tissue forms and there can be a big expansion of the chamber of the heart. It balloons out, and that is not good.
‘What you need is something nice and constricted. After the higher dose IGFI, the heart retained its shape much better.’
The researchers now hope their findings can be replicated in further trials and lead to improved quality of life and life expectancy of patients.
The trial was funded by a €1 million grant under a joint research programme run by the Health Research Board (HRB) and Science Foundation Ireland (SFI).
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