Keeping you up to date on recent headlines in cardiovascular healthcare:

66-year-old receives first cardiac stem cell infusion ... Michael Jones has become the world's first recipient of adult cardiac stem cells to treat congestive heart failure. Jones' infusion on July 17 marks the world's first phase-one FDA-approved clinical trial using adult cardiac stem cells to treat heart disease. The clinical trial is being conducted by a team of University of Louisville (UofL) physicians at Jewish Hospital (Louisville). During the infusion procedure, Jones was directly injected with his own cardiac stem cells into heart scar tissue using a minimally-invasive cardiac catheterization procedure, which reaches the heart through an artery in the patient's leg. The 66-year-old man continues to recover following the outpatient procedure, according to the hospital. Jones' infusion procedure was performed at Jewish by Sohail Ikram, MD, UofL professor of medicine and director and chief of Invasive and Interventional Cardiology at Jewish Hospital. The team will continue to evaluate Jones, as well as other patients who have enrolled in the clinical trial, for heart function and blood flow, the hospital said. In addition, the heart's overall size and the size of the scar tissue will be measured.

Terumo in U.S. study for Anaconda AAA stent graft ... Terumo Cardiovascular Systems (Ann Arbor, Michigan) said it has initiated a Phase II clinical trial for the Anaconda abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) stent graft system in the U.S. The Anaconda system is manufactured by Terumo subsidiary Vascutek (Scotland). The first U.S. implant was performed on June 8 at Arizona Heart Hospital (Phoenix) by the principal investigator, Julio Rodriguez-Lopez, MD. The study aims to assess the safety and effectiveness of the Anaconda stent graft system in patients presenting with AAA when compared to historical open surgical repair. The FDA has given Terumo approval to enroll 180 patients at 20 sites, some of which will be in Canada. The primary endpoint for the study is the successful treatment of the aneurysm 12 months after the implantation of the device. Patients in the study will be followed for a total of five years, Terumo said. The Anaconda system is commercially available outside the U.S. where it has been implanted in nearly 4000 patients. It received a CE mark in April 2005.

Boston scientists find new fix for broken heart ... Researchers in Boston appear to have a new way to fix a broken heart. They say they have devised a method to coax heart muscle cells into reentering the cell cycle, allowing the differentiated adult cells to divide and regenerate healthy heart tissue after a heart attack, according to studies in mice and rats reported in the July 24 issue of the journal Cell. The key ingredient is a growth factor known as neuregulin1 (NRG1), and the researchers suggest that the factor might one day be used to treat failing human hearts. In the study, the researchers first tested the ability of various molecules to spur cell division in cultured cardiomyocytes. If cardiomyocytes are to reenter the cell cycle along the border zone of injury, the researchers surmised that there must be an extracellular signal that triggers the response. They looked to several factors known to drive cardiomyocyte proliferation during prenatal development. Of those, NRG1 had the most significant effect, inducing the division of those cardiomyocytes with one nucleus instead of two, according to the study authors. The researchers include Kevin Bersell, Children's Hospital, Boston; Shima Arab, Children's Hospital, Boston; Bernhard Haring, Children's Hospital, Boston, Harvard Medical School (Boston); and Bernhard Kuhn, Children's Hospital, Boston and Harvard.

New York Presbyterian/Columbia implants 100th transcatheter heart valve ... Over the last four years, heart specialists at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center (New York) have implanted an aortic heart valve replacement using a catheter-based approach that does not require open-heart surgery in a total of 100 patients – the most of any U.S. medical center to date, according to the hospital. Open-heart surgery can require a two- to three-month recovery period, compared to only a few days for the transcatheter approach, the hospital noted. The procedures were conducted as part of multiple clinical research studies of the Edwards SAPIEN transcatheter heart valve. Currently ongoing is the PARTNER (Placement of AoRTic traNscathetER valves) trial, a Phase III multicenter study led by national co-principal investigators Martin Leon, MD, and Craig Smith, MD, and focused on the treatment of patients who are at high risk or not suitable for open-heart valve replacement surgery.

Arizona doctors working to repair hearts ... Researchers at The University of Arizona's Sarver Heart Center (Tucson) and the Southern Arizona Veterans Administration Health Care System (also Tucson) say they have come a step closer to repairing hearts damaged by a heart attack or weakened by chronic heart failure. "We have developed a delivery system that allows us to introduce living, healthy heart muscle cells into damaged areas of the heart in a way that is much more efficient than the conventionally practiced method of injecting cells into heart tissue," says study leader Steven Goldman, MD. Unlike most existing approaches, in which cardiac cells with no supporting structure are injected into heart tissue, Goldman's group uses a patch made by Theregen (San Francisco) made from microscopically thin fibers that serve as a scaffold to which the cells can adhere. The group's latest achievements have attracted the attention of the American Heart Association (Dallas), which picked the research as one of the most noteworthy achievements of this year's Cardiovascular Sciences annual conference in Las Vegas. "Ultimately, we hope to use our system in patients with chronic heart failure and, possibly, to prevent heart failure in patients who had a heart attack," says Jordan Lancaster, a pre-doctoral fellow in Goldman's lab who presented the research at the meeting last week.

High-profile deaths show need for at-home monitoring ... The recent passing of several celebrities, including Billy Mays and Tim Russert, has brought attention to a disease that is believed to be the leading cause of death in men in the U.S. Yet even with the increased attention to heart disease, a recent survey shows that only 14% of people would be inclined to start regularly monitoring their blood pressure at home – a preventive measure recommended by the American Heart Association (AHA; Dallas) because it can help signal impending cardiac distress caused by high blood pressure. Omron Healthcare (Bannockburn, Illinois), the North and South American sales and marketing office of Omron Healthcare Group, a manufacturer and distributor of blood pressure monitors for home use, says the recent high-profile cardiac deaths highlights the need for at-home blood pressure monitoring. "High blood pressure is called 'the silent killer' since it has little or no symptoms. Many people don't realize that it can be difficult to detect by only monitoring it in a doctor's office, which is why home blood pressure monitoring is so important," Annabelle Volgman, MD, a cardiologist at Rush University Medical Center (Chicago) said in a prepared statement. "It's an absolutely critical step for anyone with known or suspected hypertension and may provide the only early warning to a cardiac event."

— Compiled by Amanda Pedersen, MDD