- People with irregular heart rhythms currently implanted with a defibrillator
- The box delivers a painful electric shock which makes the heart beat again
- Light has a similar effect and can restore normal rhythm without any pain
- Experts say it could take ten years before it could be used in humans
Colin Fernandez Science Correspondent For The Daily Mail
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Life-threatening heart failure could be stopped using pulses of light, scientists claim.
People known to be at risk of sudden death from irregular heart rhythms are currently implanted with a defibrillator.
This is a box which delivers a painful electric shock which makes the heart beat regularly again.
But now scientists at the University of Bonn, Germany, have developed a technique that can restart a heart using gentle pulses of light inside the body.
Scientists have developed a technique that can restart a heart using gentle pulses of light inside the body instead of painful electric shocks
The research, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, involved an experiment on mouse hearts, but the same principle could eventually be used in humans.
The successful results open the way to replace conventional defibrillators with ones that use light.
Defibrillators, when they detect an irregular heart rhythm, deliver intense electrical shocks to the patient.
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This makes the chambers of the heart beat in a regular, synchronised way that allows blood to be pumped in an orderly way around the body, rather than in the chaotic way that occurs during arrhythmia.
The irregular rhythms can cause fatal strokes.
Philipp Sasse, from the University of Bonn, said: ‘When an implanted defibrillator is triggered, which unfortunately can also happen because of false detection of arrhythmia, it is always a very traumatic event for the patient.
‘The strong electrical shock is very painful and can even damage the heart.’
People known to be at risk of sudden death from irregular heart rhythms are currently implanted with a defibrillator
To enable the heart to respond to light stimulation, mice are implanted with genetically engineered cells that respond to light.
These light-sensitive cells are developed by using genes taken from sea algae.
The cells can be implanted by an injection using a biotechnologically produced virus, a gene therapy technique which has already been used in humans in other applications.
When light is triggered, these produce impulses that effect the heart muscle which regularise it – creating a similar effect to an electric shock but without the pain, and enough to restore normal rhythm.
Co-author Dr Tobias Brugman said: ‘This is a very important result. It shows for the first time experimentally in the heart that optogenetic stimulation can be used for defibrillation of cardiac arrhythmia.’
The scientists at the University of Bonn are working with experts from Johns Hopkins University to apply their findings to human hearts.
Professor Sasse said the technique could take between five and ten years before it could be used in humans.
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