New medicine helps heart repair itself

PATIENTS with heart failure — where the heart is unable to pump blood around the body properly, often after a heart attack or stroke — could benefit from a new drug.

In a trial, doctors at Vanderbilt University in the U.S. gave one dose of the drug cimaglermin to 40 heart failure patients and found it improved the ability of the heart to pump blood around the body after just 28 days.

Researchers say the treatment allowed the failing heart to heal using its own repair mechanisms.

This is because the drug acts as a growth factor (a substance that stimulates growth in living cells), binding to the receptors on the surface of cells that are needed for repair.

The study was published in the journal JACC: Basic To Translational Science.