Even after a heart attack, the muscles of the heart can regenerate says the NIH
It has long been assumed that when the heart is damaged — such as after a heart attack — heart muscle cells do not regenerate and the damage is permanent. This assumption has been challenged in recent years by evidence that heart muscle cells may in fact regenerate. Now, this latest research provides the most dramatic and clear-cut demonstration to date of heart cell regeneration after cardiac injury," says Claude Lenfant, M.D., director of the NHLBI, a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
You don't die with the same heart you were born with
Heart muscle renewed over lifetime, study finds
About 1 percent of the heart muscle cells are replaced every year at age 25, and that rate gradually falls to less than half a percent per year by age 75, concluded a team of researchers led by Dr. Jonas Frisen of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. The upshot is that about half of the heart’s muscle cells are exchanged in the course of a normal lifetime, the Swedish group calculates. Its results are to be published Friday in the journal Science.
Those nuclear weapons tested in the atmosphere until 1963 in essence "labelled the cells of the entire world's population".
By measuring the amount of carbon 14 in the heart muscles, the scientists were able to calculate the turnover of cells in what was called a "scientific tour de force"
Posted by Jill Fallon at April 4, 2009 12:53 PM | Permalink