HealthDay
(3/24, Reinberg) reported, "An innovative approach using patients' own
bone marrow cells to treat chronic heart failure came up short in terms
of effectiveness," according to a study presented at the American College of Cardiology's annual meeting and
published online in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
HeartWire
(3/24, Hughes) reported that the study, called FOCUS-CCTRN, showed that
the treatment had "no significant effect on the prespecified end points
of left ventricular end-systolic volume (LVESV), maximal oxygen
consumption, or reversibility on single-photon-emission computed
tomography (SPECT)."
MedPage Today
(3/24, Phend) reported, however, that "the autologous stem cells raised
left ventricular ejection fraction in an exploratory analysis,
suggesting it's too early to give up on the strategy in ischemic heart
failure, the researchers argued." According to MedPage Today, LVEF
"rose 1.4 percentage points over six months with stem cell treatment but
fell 1.3 percentage points with placebo (P=0.03)."
A Reuters
(3/24, Pierson, Sherman) article extensively quoted one of the study's
authors, Dr. James Willerson of the Texas Heart Institute, who touts
the use of stem cells, particularly those derived from fat, to treat
patients with heart failure.
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