(Guardian-UK) Melissa Davey - While human blood, hair and skin cells renew themselves throughout life, humans are unable to easily regenerate heart cells, making it difficult to recover from the permanent damage caused by heart attacks. But scientists from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and the Victor Chang Institute in Sydney have discovered a way to stimulate heart muscle cells to grow, which could have major implications for heart attack sufferers in the future. The scientists found that by stimulating a signaling system in the heart driven by a hormone called neuregulin, heart muscle cells divided in a spectacular way in both adolescent and adult mice. The triggering of the neuregulin pathway following a heart attack in the mice lead to replacement of lost muscle, repairing the heart to a level close to that prior to the heart attack.
2015-04-09 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive