A research finance by the Barbados-based Institute for Regenerative Medicine, showed that patients with advanced heart failure who received stem cell therapy witness marked improvement.

The study of a small clinical trial pursued by the Luis Vernaza Hospital in Guyaquil, Ecuador were officially released yesterday, and indicated that 30 days after receiving the stem cell treatment via injection into their hearts, patients improved an average of 41 percent in their hearts pumping efficiency and the distance they could walk non-stop improved by 72 percent in a standard test that is normally used to assess heart patients.

“These result suggest a potential for changing the trajectory of heart failure, “ says Barnett Suskind, CEO of the institute currently located in Villa Nova, St. John. “We are committed to supporting and performing stem cell research to move to therapeutic applications. We will follow these patients to obtain additional, longer-term data, as well as perform variations of the procedure in new patients as part of an extension of this study.”

The research is the first reported human-foetal stem cell therapy on patients with heart failure. Advance heart failure is uncurable and usually deadly ailment. The only remedy is heart replacement.

In the trial, ten patients with advanced heart failure underwent open chest surgery at which time human foetal stem cells were injected into their hearts. The patients were tested for the sharpness of their heart failure before and after the test, and 30 and 90 days after in accord with the New York Heart Association Standards.

The Institute reported: “ The stem cells used in the study were provided by the Institute for Regenerative Medicine and prepared from foetal tissues from legally consenting, non-compensated donors outside the US who underwent terminated ectopic pregnancies, elective abortions or spontaneous miscarriages. Prior to use, the cells were screened for viral, bacterial and fungal pathogens, similar to but more rigorous than screening tests used for human blood and organs. Each patient received 60-80 million cells.

The Institute is currently evaluating stem cell therapy in a variety of other disease conditions, and we will begin additional studies in diabetes, neurological disorders, spinal cord injuries and other conditions over the next year, says Suskind.