Up to 850, 000 people suffer from tightening and pain in their chest, a condition known as angina.
“It feels like something is standing on my chest making it tough to breathe and causing pain,” Lilly Evans said. She has suffered with angina for the last five years. “It’s tough to do everyday things like take a walk or play with my kids at the park.”
A new study may offer some hope for people like Evans. Researchers injected stem cells into the hearts of those with angina and found positive results, about half of the patients in the trial had less chest pain and could exercise more.
“One exciting potential of this procedure is that it will offer these folks an opportunity to get part of their lives back,” said Douglas Losordo, who is also director of the Program in Cardiovascular Regenerative Medicine at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
In the study, 167 patients at 26 U.S. medical centers were randomized to one of three injection groups: low dose, high dose or a placebo.
The results of this study were published by the American Heart Association. Here are the highlights:
*At six months, low-dose patients had 6.8 angina attacks per week – significantly fewer than 10.9 per week for those receiving placebo. High-dose patients had fewer episodes than the placebo group, but the difference was not statistically significant.
*At 12 months, the low-dose group had 6.3 episodes per week and the placebo patients had 11 episodes per week; high-dose patients had fewer angina episodes than the control group, but the difference remained insignificant.
*The improvement in exercise tolerance at six months in low-dose patients was 139 seconds, which was significantly greater compared to the 69-second tolerance of the placebo patients. The high-dose group had a greater, but not significant, improvement than the placebo patients.
*At six and 12 months, both treated groups were using less nitroglycerine to treat angina than control patients, but the differences were not significant.
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