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Injecting brand new muscle cells directly into the heart helps it recover after a heart attack, a study in monkeys has found.

Heart attacks cut off blood supply to the heart, causing some of the heart muscle cells to die. Survivors often develop chronic heart failure, in which their hearts struggle to pump blood to the rest of the body, leaving them feeling weak and tired.

at the University of Washington and his colleagues wondered if injecting new heart muscle cells into the damaged heart could help.

They injected new heart muscle cells into the hearts of six southern pig-tailed macaques 鈥� large monkeys with similar hearts to humans 鈥� two weeks after they had heart attacks. The heart muscle cells were grown from stem cells from human embryos.

Muscle power

After three months, the monkeys given the new heart muscle cells had 23 per cent higher ejection fractions 鈥� a measure of heart pumping capacity 鈥� than those treated with a sham. 鈥淚n humans, that would mean the difference from being unable to walk more than a few blocks or carry your own groceries to living a normal life,鈥� says Murry.

Five of the animals tolerated the cell treatment well; however, one developed abnormal heart rhythms. These were transient, but they could potentially be dangerous in human patients, says Murry. 鈥淭hese are the most concerning side effects right now and we are working hard to identify drug therapies to manage them,鈥� he says.

Other groups have experimented with using cardiac stem cells, bone marrow stem cells and umbilical cord stem cells to treat heart failure. These also improve heart pumping capacity, but not to the same extent as the embryo-derived heart muscle cells used in the latest study.

Murry and his colleagues are planning to test the embryo-derived heart muscle cells in human patients in 2020.

Read more: Magnetic cells could fix a broken heart after a heart attack