Artificial hearts regenerate faster than healthy hearts, research discovers

A research team discovered some artificial heart patients can regenerate heart muscle, which may open the door to new ways to treat and perhaps someday cure heart failure. The team was co-led by a physician-scientist at University of Arizona College of Medicine Tucson’s Sarver Heart Center.

The investigators found that patients with artificial hearts regenerated muscle cells at more than six times the rate of healthy hearts.

“This is the strongest evidence we have, so far, that human heart muscle cells can actually regenerate,” said Dr. Hesham Sadek, chief of the Division of Cardiology in the Department of Medicine and director of the Sarver Heart Center.

Dr. Sadek discussed the team’s findings, specifically focusing on the research in making the heart muscle grow, which in humans stops growing after birth. Unlike an artificial heart, the human heart cells cannot regenerate because of the process of oxidation and because of its main operation of constantly pushing blood.

Several years ago, Dr. Sadek and his team partnered with Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and the University of Utah and found that by carbon-dating the cells, some artificial heart patients’ cells are proven to divide.

Through past and recent research, an artificial heart serves more of a purpose for heart failure patients. Dr. Sadek said an artificial heart could be used as a means to regenerate the human heart instead of solely for “destination therapy.”

“Of the patients who get artificial hearts, about 25% of them can recover their function,” Dr. Sadek said.

In order to put this research to work, the team will use an imaging technique to monitor the heart in order to find out when heart failure patients can be taken off a heart pump.