Breakthrough Stem Cell Therapy for Heart Patients become

 

Cardiologist at Düsseldorf University Hospital said that they had
  become the first in the world to use stem cell therapy to save a patient who suffered a severe heart attack.

Düsseldorf newspaper Rheinische Post reported the story of the success of stem cell therapy in patients 64 years of age.

Bodo-Eckehard Stauer, director of the department of cardiology at the University Hospital Düsseldorf, told the Rheinische Post that the patient was "on the verge of dying" after suffering a severe heart attack. The man spent seven weeks in the intensive care unit with no signs of improvement.


Stauer decided to apply stem cell therapy in patients. After nine days of treatment, he had improved enough that he could leave intensive care and transferred to a rehabilitation center.

This therapy involves extraction of adult stem cells from the bone marrow of patients and then insert them, with the help of a balloon catheter, into an artery damaged by infarction.
This procedure takes about half an hour.

Stauer called it a "global innovation" in cardiogenic shock - inadequate delivery of oxygen to the heart tissue - can be treated with stem cell therapy for the first time.

Embryonic stem cell research is banned in Germany

The stem cell therapy, however, has enlivened the debate about embryonic stem cell research.

More recently, the German government said it would allocate € 5 million ($ 6.9 million) over the next three years to research non-embryonic stem cells.

Stem cells can develop into different cell types, including bone, blood and brain. Specialists say that they can help in treating diseases such as Parkinson's, and can help to regenerate damaged organs or tissue.

The researchers say embryonic stem cells - cells taken from human embryos-days old - the most promising.

Woman in a car suffering from a heart attack

Mild heart attack often go unnoticed

However, genetic studies strongly opposed in Germany because of the history of Nazi experiments to create a superior race.

Since 2002, the production of cells of the embryonic stem cell lines that already exist previously banned in Germany. Scientists are also not allowed to research on each line produced after January 1, 2002 to ensure that foreign laboratories do not make a new path for the German market.

Critics say the ban put German scientists at a disadvantage.

Critics of embryonic stem cell research, however, said that the progress of the treatment of adult stem cells, such as the patient's heart in Düsseldorf, canceling the need of cells derived from human embryos.