Angioplasty, medication, and coronary artery bypass graft surgery are the currently preferred treatments for alleviating chest pains resulting from the blockage of coronary arteries.
But new research shows that injecting CD34+ stem cells into the key areas of the heart can significantly reduce the number of chest pain episodes a patient might experience.
"Coronary artery disease involves not only the blockage of major arteries, but the death of small vessels, or capillaries, of the heart muscle," lead researcher Douglas W. Losordo of Chicago's Northwestern University told PressTV.
"This treatment targets these small vessels that have been damaged. The stem cells have shown the ability to repair and replace them in animal models," Losordo continued.
The study was prompted by a finding, now a decade old, that showed CD34+ stem cells were able to stimulate the formation of new blood vessels.
The study first gave patients a drug that increased the number of CD34+ stem cells in their bloodstream. These cells were then harvested and injected into areas of the heart muscle that had been identified to be oxygen-deprived.
The follow up a year later showed that patients that received the treatment had a lower number of chest pain episodes and gave a better performance in the exercise tolerance test than patients that had not received the treatment, according to a report published in the American Heart Association journal Circulation Research.
