Most often, a &ldquo;broken heart&rdquo; is just a metaphor, but when it&rsquo;s not, it can be fatal. Heart failure affects approximately <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213398424000526">1% of the Indian </a>population, and around 2% of the global population, increasing to 10% among patients above 70 years.
For decades, doctors have relied on medications to slow the progression of heart failure or, in severe cases, turned to heart transplants or mechanical pump replacements, known as left ventricular assist devices (LVADs). But now, a new study&nbsp;published in Circulation&nbsp;could pave the way for novel treatments&mdash;and potentially a cure&mdash;for heart failure&nbsp;hints at something once thought impossible: the heart&rsquo;s ability to heal itself.
&ldquo;Skeletal muscle has a significant ability to regenerate after injury. If you tear a muscle while playing soccer, you rest, and it heals,&rdquo; said Dr Hesham Sadek, co-lead on the study who is also the director of the Sarver Heart Center and chief of cardiology at the University of Arizona. &ldquo;But when heart muscle is injured, it doesn&rsquo;t grow back. We have nothing to reverse heart muscle loss.&rdquo;
Until now.
Groundbreaking discovery
The study has uncovered evidence that certain artificial heart patients can regenerate heart muscle.
At the risk of oversimplifying some <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/12/241220191007.htm">very complex science</a>, LVADs allow the heart muscles to rest long enough to heal, much like other muscles that get injured during sports or other physical activities.
Think of it like this: LVADs work like an extra pump during a water shortage. Imagine your building&rsquo;s primary pump is struggling to supply enough water to all the apartments in a building. To ensure a steady flow of water, you install an electric pump to push water directly into the pipes. This is how an LVAD works: It helps push blood into arteries (the pipes, in our analogy), while bypassing the heart&mdash;basically reducing the strain on the heart when it becomes too weak to pump blood effectively. This allows the heart to rest and recover.
Not all patients, yet
While the study shows promise, only about 25% of patients with LVADs are &ldquo;responders,&rdquo; meaning their hearts regenerate muscle cells.
Sadek&rsquo;s next challenge is understanding why.
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not clear why some patients respond and others don&rsquo;t,&rdquo; he said. 
&ldquo;But what&rsquo;s clear is that the ones who respond have the ability to regenerate heart muscle. The exciting part now is to figure out how to make everyone a responder, because if we can, we can essentially cure heart failure.&rdquo;
Sadek noted that LVADs are not some futuristic therapy but a proven treatment.
&ldquo;The beauty of this discovery is that we&rsquo;re not relying on future innovations. These devices are already in widespread use, and now we&rsquo;re finding they may hold even greater potential for cardiac recovery.&rdquo;
In fact, in India, a team of IITians and investors have been working on a made-in-India LVAD <a href="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/nagpur/made-in-india-artificial-heart-to-be-8-times-cheaper-than-imported-one/articleshow/94440316.cms">since 2022</a>. Once ready, the device is expected to cost just ₹20 lakh, 1/6&mdash;literally a fraction&mdash;of the ₹1.20 crore cost of an imported artificial heart.
One step at a time 
The paper in Circulation builds on more than a decade of Dr Sadek&rsquo;s research.
In a paper he published in Science&nbsp;back in 2011, Sadek showed that while foetal heart muscle cells divide and multiply in utero, they stop doing so shortly after birth. This allows a baby&rsquo;s heart to focus entirely on pumping blood&mdash;a relentless job that leaves no time for repair&nbsp;as the child grows and ages. &nbsp;
In another study in 2014, Sadek suggested that patients with LVADs might see some cardiac muscle regeneration.
To test this theory, Sadek&rsquo;s team partnered with an international cohort of researchers. Tissue samples from artificial heart patients were provided by the University of Utah Health and School of Medicine, led by Dr Stavros Drakos. Meanwhile, scientists at Sweden&rsquo;s Karolinska Institute used innovative carbon-dating techniques to identify newly formed heart muscle cells in these samples.
Their results were striking: Patients with artificial hearts regenerated heart muscle cells at more than six times the rate of healthy hearts.
&ldquo;This is the strongest evidence we have so far that human heart muscle cells can actually regenerate even in adults,&rdquo; said Sadek. &ldquo;It also supports the idea that the heart loses regenerative capacity after birth largely due to its non-stop workload.&rdquo;

Study shows that mechanical hearts can help some patients regenerate cardiac muscle tissue

Can a Heart Heal Itself? Science Says Maybe

Study shows that mechanical hearts can help some patients regenerate cardiac muscle tissue

December 31, 2024 | 23:53 IST