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Harvard Grows Heart Tissue, Watches it Beat

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by Aaron Saenz on November 3rd, 2009
By color coding stem cells, reserachers were able to isolate those that would form different parts of the heart.

By color-coding stem cells, reserachers isolated those that would form different parts of the heart.

It’s Alive! Researchers at Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital have succeeded in taking embryonic stem cells from mice and growing cardiovascular tissue. The research team, led by Dr. Kenneth Chien, believes that a similar process may one day serve to repair cardiac damage in humans. The work was recently published in the journal Science. You can see the mouse heart cells beating at different speeds in the video from Boston.com after the break.

Cardiac injury is some of the most difficult damage to heal in the body. When the heart undergoes massive damage from a coronary, you have few options – replace broken parts, add a pacemaker, or get a whole new heart. The work done by Chien and his team focuses on creating a new way to repair tissue damage. Instead of adding in mechanical parts, or finding a donor organ, stem cells may be used to replace and heal the damaged cardiac tissue. Eventually, those patients that develop a myocardial injury could have pluripotent stem cells harvested from their skin, marrow, or fat which would then be introduced into the heart via injection. No open heart surgery, no pacemakers, just stem cells and a needle.

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Study: Elderly With Less Vitamin D More Likely to Die

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by Aaron Saenz on September 28th, 2009
Adequate levels of vitamin D may make the elderly three times less likely to die of heart disease.

Adequate levels of vitamin D may make the elderly three times less likely to die of heart disease.

In case you were wondering about whether or not to take that walk outside today, a new study has shown that vitamin D is linked to lower death rates among the elderly. The University of Colorado Denver, and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) recently published findings that patients over 65 with low levels of vitamin D are three times more likely to die of heart disease than their peers with adequate amounts. The same group was two and half times more likely to die no matter the cause. Holy crap! This research makes it sound like not taking vitamin D supplements is a guaranteed death sentence.

The study was quite appropriately published in the Journal of the American Geriatric Society, but it could have wider implications outside of geriatrics. Vitamin D’s ability to prevent heart disease and stroke could be useful for those in middle age or younger. UC Denver and MGH also completed an earlier study (in the Archives of Internal Medicine) that demonstrate how vitamin D could boost the immune system against colds and flu. The National Institute for Health is currently ramping up VITAL, a five year study to determine the effects of long term use of supplements of vitamin D and fish oil. VITAL is going to be huge.

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