Now, stem cells have been out there for a while in research. Most recently, people have been holding stem cells as the eventual cure for many problems including spinal cord injury, neurological disorders, patients with any kind of permanent damage to their bodies; we could regrow portions or segments of organs, whatever the case may be. Well, a study that was recently done undertaken by the Mayo clinic and also researchers in Belgium concurrently, they used a mouse study to study mice with cardiac- induced cardiac problems. They then used the mouse’s own stem cells to change them using a recombinant DNA technique to go ahead and change those stem cells. They were targeted to become cardiac cells. The goal of course was to see if they can regrow dead cardiac muscle.
Now, this is a problem. If you have a patient with a heart attack, they have cardiac ischemia and then eventually death of the cardiac cells; they have that portion of their heart as non-functioning and it will not be getting any better. Patients that begin the downward slide of heart failure because of cardiac events or a series of cardiac events over time causing deaths of portions of the cardiac muscle, how do you regrow that cardiac muscle? You can’t, it won’t regenerate itself. But, if we are able to target stem cells to actually go in there- you have a patient with a significant cardiac event, you could put them on a cardiac bypass device to hold them momentarily to keep them on that bypass device, allowing the heart time to heal itself and regenerate cardiac tissue.
That’s a long way off. This type of study is still on the animal study stages so we’re looking at 10-15 years ‘til something like this might reach the patient population but it does hold out hope that stem cells do seem to be providing the tools needed to take care of patients with a whole host of injuries, whether it’s a medically related injury such as a cardiac event or if its perhaps a spinal cord injury because if we can regrow and regenerate cardiac cells, we should be able to do something similar for other types of cells and eventually perhaps even neurological cells. You may have patients coming in asking you questions because they see news headlines about things like this occurring and you should be able to talk to them about it and let them know that there’s a lot of great research going on out there. In may not help in the immediate near term but down the road, it could save a patient from otherwise be neither a life of disability or a life that would be extremely shortened and death following closely along.
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This article has been featured in the news segment of the Nursing Show podcast episode Psychological Assessment and Episode 145.
