Dr. Philip Houck, associate director of the division of cardiology at Scott & White Memorial Hospital, is a believer that this low-tech solution can increase a cardiac patient’s stem cells.
“Every one of my patients gets a little lecture that I want them to exercise for one hour a day,” Houck said.
People as they get older begin to do less and in the process become weak and feeble, he said. They fall down and then they have to go to a nursing home, he said.
“If even our older patients can do some form of exercise these circulating stem cells will go out and rejuvenate organs,” Houck said.
It’s not as glitzy and glamorous as injecting stem cells into the heart, but it works very well, he said.
A review of previously published research suggests that stem cells harvested from an adult’s blood or marrow may help some patients with cardiovascular disorders and autoimmune diseases, according to an article in the Feb. 27 issue of JAMA (Journal of the Medical Association).
In broad terms, there are two types of stem cells, embryonic stem cells and adult stem cells. Human embryonic stem cells are isolated from a 4- to 5-day-old embryo. Adult stem cells are located in tissues throughout the body and function as a reservoir to replace damaged or aging cells.
Stem cell therapy is rapidly developing and shows great promise, “but clinical application has lagged due to ethical concerns or difficulties in harvesting or safely and efficiently expanding sufficient quantities,” according to the JAMA article. In contrast, clinical indications for adult stem are rapidly increasing, the authors write.Dr. Richard K. Burt of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, and colleagues conducted a review of articles regarding the use of blood- and bone marrow-derived stem cells. These studies were published between January 1997 and December 2007.
Studies involving thousands of cardiac patients suggest that adult stem cell may contribute to modest improvement in cardiac function.
When looking at improvement in function it might mean patients feel better, Houck said. However, an objective measure would be to look at the ejection fraction, the squeezing function, of the heart.
In a normal heart the ejection fraction would be 60 percent, he said. A person who has had a heart attack might have an ejection of 35 percent.
As people recover from a heart attack, if they are exercising, some improvement is possible, Houck said.
Most of the studies that were reviewed showed an improvement of 7 percent, he said, while an improvement in a normal person it might go up 3 or 4 percent.
“So it’s a not a great change, but it’s movement in the right direction,” Houck said.
Though controversy seems to follow embyronic stem cell research, the attributes of those cells are worth studying because of the cells’ unique abilities, Dr. Houck said.
“Each one of us has our embryonic stem cells, they didn’t go away, and they are still within us and they are going out and rejuvenating us,” he said.
For the average person, embryonic stem cells probably will not be a form of therapy; however, it’s important to understand what those cells will do, Houck said.
Adult stem cells harvested from blood or marrow, administered under appropriate conditions in select patients, provide improvement in some autoimmune diseases and cardiovascular disorders. Clinical trials are needed to determine the most appropriate cell type, dose, method, timing of delivery, and adverse effects of adult HSCs for these and other nonmalignant disorders,” the authors conclude.
