Kashish Sharma
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Written By: Kashish Sharma | Published : March 21, 2023 5:50 PM IST
Most of the time, rapid healing that occurs after a heart attack results in the formation of scar tissue in place of working muscle tissue.
When you get a skeletal injury, your body repairs it within a few days. Do you wonder what might happen to a person's cardiac muscles following a heart attack? For people who might be exercising routinely or regulating their diet in hope of recovery, is that truly any scope for repairing or strengthening the back of those muscles? Until recently it was believed that the human heart didn't have this capacity. Some studies have been suggesting that some regeneration does occur but the rate might be too low to heal the damage caused by a heart attack.
Most of the time, rapid healing that occurs after a heart attack results in the formation of scar tissue in place of working muscle tissue. As per surgeons, during a heart attack, time is muscle. The heart depends on a continuous supply of oxygen and when the supply is blocked off even for a few minutes, the heart's muscle cells start to die off.
Injury or damage to the heart muscles can lead to poor cardiac output over the years. Heart muscles or cardiomyocytes replicate at a slow rate of 0.5 per cent a year, falling way short of repairing the damage caused by any cardiac event. In place of working tissue, thick, tough and rigid scar tissue develops instead. Eventually, the heart gets weaker and weaker and it might develop into heart failure. As per studies, around half of the patients with heart failure do not have a life of more than five years after the diagnosis is made.
The best treatment at present for heart failure is to get a transplant. However, this option has poor accessibility as the number of patients exceeds the number of hearts available for the procedure and also it is not economical for many. Stem cell medicine can become an alternative where attempts are made to remuscularize the damaged heart. However, many studies are coming up that are trying to repair heart damage by going beyond cardiomyocyte repair. A study identified a chemical or signal pathway in our body that might prevent these muscle cells to regenerate. Scientists suggested making an attempt at trying to switch off or block that signal chain. Another recent study has identified a particular gene affecting the contractile strength of the heart muscles. Researchers have found that when cardiomyocytes are damaged, they lose their contractile ability which is crucial for the heart to pump blood. They found that when this gene was overexpressed, it resulted in the loss of heart muscle cell function. However, when this overexpression was stopped, the heart muscle cells started to regain their contractile ability.
