Human Heart Can Make New
Ceils ? ? Solving a longstanding (为时甚久的) mystery,
scientists have found that the human heart continues to generate new cardiac
(心脏的) cells throughout the life span, although the rate of new cell production
slows with age. ? ? The finding, published in the April 3 issue of
Science, could open a new path for the treatment of heart diseases such as heart
failure and heart attack, experts say. ? ? "We find that the
beating cells in the heart, cardiomyocytes (心肌细胞), are renewed," said lead
researcher Dr. Jonas Frisen, a professor of stem cell research at the Karolinska
Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. "It has previously not been known whether we
were limited to the cardiomyocytes we are born with or if they could be
renewed," he said. ? ? The process of renewing these cells changes
over time, Frisen added. In a 20-year-old, about 1 percent of cardiomyocytes are
exchanged each year, but the turnover (更替) rate decreases with age to only 0.45
percent by age 75. ? ? "If we can understand how the generation of
new cardiomyocytes is regulated, it may be potentially possible to develop
pharmaceuticals (药物) that promote this process to stimulate regeneration after,
for example, a heart attack," Frisen said. ? ? That could lead to
treatment that helps restore damaged hearts. ? ? "A lot of people
suffer from chronic heart failure," noted co-author Dr. Ratan Bhardwaj, also
from the Karolinska Institute. "Chronic heart failure arises from heart cells
dying," he said. ? ? With this finding, scientists are "opening
the door to potential therapies (疗法) to having ourselves heal ourselves,"
Bhardwaj said. "Maybe one could devise a pharmaceutical agent that would make
heart cells make new and more cells to overcome the problem they are facing. "
? ? But barriers remain. According to Bhardwaj, scientists do not
yet know how to increase heart cell production to a rate that would replace
cells faster than they are dying off, especially in older patients with heart
failure. In addition, the number of new cells the heart produces was estimated
using healthy hearts -- whether the rate of cell turnover in diseased hearts is
the same remains unknown. |