Scientists have found a technique to restart a rat heart. They discovered this by trying to find heart treatment. They are hoping to be able to restart a human heart. But it could be years till that could happen. It is an amazing discovery but it would dangerous to restart a human heart. Scientists have worked for years for ways to grow body parts. There have been many efforts to replace the plastic or animal valves that wear out after being implanted in humans. If this new technique works, the 50,000 people who die annually waiting for a transplant could be save. What the team did to the rat heart was the scientists took 8 newborn rat hearts and removed the cells. What was left behind was gelatin-like matrix shaped like a heart and containing conduits where the blood cells were. Scientists then inserted cells into this scaffold- muscle cells and endothelial cells, which line blood vessels. The muscle cells covered the walls and lined together, while the endothelial cells found their way into the blood vessels. The heart was stimulated electrically. By two days they saw tiny, microscopic contractions. By seven to eight day there were contractions large enough to see with the naked eye. But the hearts could only pump liquid at about ¼ of a normal fetal rat’s heart. Scientists believe that they will be able to work with human hearts. They had tried it with a pig’s heart which is the same size as a human’s heart and they were successful. It is amazing but I do not think that they would be successful with a human heart. If they weren’t completely successful with a rat heart how will they be able to do it with a human heart? But there could be a small chance they could do it. I say that time will tell. My source, http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=4135541&page=1 says that it will take at least a decade to even thinking about testing it on human hearts.
