Cardiovascular disease affects millions worldwide and is a progressive condition involving the loss of cardiomyocytes. Myocardial infraction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack often plays a major role in the proliferation of endogenous cardiac fibroblasts, which account for more than half of the cells in the heart, leading to fibrosis and heart failure. The human heart has limited ability to regenerate lost or damaged cardiomyocytes after cardiac injury. Research studies have introduced the importance of reprogramming cells into cardiomyocytes, which involve reprogramming fibroblasts into cardiomyocytes for cardiac muscle regeneration.
Introduction
According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 17 million people die from cardiovascular disease worldwide every year. Clearly this statistic explains that a vast majority of people throughout the world are affected by heart disease, which is a leading cause of death for both men and women worldwide. In fact, heart failure is often caused by the damage or loss of
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Xin et al. (2014) states that fibroblasts can be reprogrammed into (iPS) cells, which are cells that display properties of embryonic stem (ES) cells, through four pluripotency gene transcription factors, known as OCT4, SOX2, KLF4, and MYC- (OSKM) (p. 537). These transcription factors assist with the conversion of (iPS) cells into fibroblasts, which are differentiated into cardiomyocytes and later used for cardiac regeneration. As a matter of fact, cardiomyocytes derived from human (iPS) cells were observed and used for specific disease models, and many laboratories have established various disease models using (iPS) cells as well (Yamakawa et al.,2015, p. 2). This clearly explains the importance of cardiomyocytes generated from (iPS) cells and the role these cells play in not only cardiac regeneration, but disease modeling as
Cardiomyopathy, by definition, means the weakening of the heart muscle. The heart is operated by a striated muscle that relies on the autonomic nervous system to function. Cardiomyopathy is diagnosed in four different ways based on what caused the illness and exactly what part of the heart is weakened. The four main types of cardiomyopathy are dilated cardiomyopathy, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, restrictive cardiomyopathy, and arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia. One other category of cardiomyopathy that is diagnosed is “unclassified cardiomyopathy.” Unclassified cardiomyopathy is the weakening of the heart that does not fit into the main four categories.
Heart disease is one of the most common causes of the mortality and morbidity in most well developed countries. They come in different forms such as stroke and other cardiovascular diseases and it’s the number one cause of death in the state of America. In the year 2011 alone nearly 787,000 people were killed as a result of this epidemic. And this included Hispanic, Africans, whites and Americans. As for the Asian Americans or pacific Islanders, American Indians and the natives of Alaska, the concept to them was a second only to cancer. However, statistics has proved that a person gets heart attack every 34 seconds and in every 60 seconds, someone dies out of it which include other related event. Additionally, majority of the women are the
History was made on December 02, 1982 when Barney Clark became the first recipient of an artificial heart transplant, which was performed by the medical staff at the University of Utah Medical Center. Although Barney Clark was the center of attention, there were many events that led up to this historical moment.
Power can be defined as the ability to influence or outright control the behavior of people. A variety of different things can drive power, including both knowledge and experience. Power in most cases is needed to establish authority. In today’s country, the United States government has a lot of power. It has so much power that even American citizens are beginning to complain about it. Having all this power and authority has allowed the government to make decisions quicker. However, by making decisions faster, some mistakes can be made and innocent people can be convicted. This point is directly exemplified when using two New Yorker articles, “Surviving Solitary” and ‘A Shot to The Heart.” Both articles consist of results produced quite
Brendan Maher, in his article “How to Build a Heart” discusses doctor’s and engineer’s research and experimentation into the field of regenerative medicine. Maher talks about several different researchers in this fields. One is Doris Taylor, the director of regenerative medicine at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston. Her job includes harvesting organs such as hearts and lungs and re-engineering them starting with the cells. She attempts to bring the back to life in order to be used for people who are on transplant waiting lists. She hopes to be able to make the number of people waiting for transplants diminish with her research but it is a very difficult process. Maher says that researchers have had some successes when it comes to rebuilding organs but only with simples ones such as a bladder. A heart is much more complicated and requires many more cells to do all the functions it needs to. New organs have to be able to do several things in order for them to be used in humans that are still alive. They need to be sterile, able to grow, able to repair themselves, and work. Taylor has led some of the first successful experiments to build rat hearts and is hopeful of a good outcome with tissue rebuilding and engineering. Scientists have been able to make beating heart cells in a petri dish but the main issue now is developing a scaffold for these cells so that they can form in three dimension. Harold Ott, a surgeon from Massachusetts General Hospital and studied under Taylor, has a method that he developed while training. Detergent is pumped into a glass chamber where a heart is suspended and this detergent strips away everything except a layer of collagen, laminins, and other proteins. The hard part according to Ott is making s...
Stem cells are pluripotent cells of the body which are “undifferentiated.” This means that stem cells can ultimately give rise to any type of body tissue. Thus stem cells have the potential to cure a vast number of diseases and physical ailments including Parkinson’s, diabetes, spinal cord injury, and heart disease. Consequently, stem cell research and the development of associated medical applications are of great interest to the scientific and medical community. The area of stem cell research involving human embryonic stem cells is of particular interest in that embryonic stem cells are derived from week-old blastocysts developed from in vitro fertilized eggs. As opposed to adult stem cells, which must undergo a complicated process of de-differen...
This assignment is a case study that aims to explore the biospychosocial impacts of a myocardial infarction on a service user. It will focus on the interventions used by healthcare professionals throughout the patient’s journey to recovery. To abide by the NMC’s code of conduct (2015) which states that all nurses owe a duty of confidentiality to all those who are receiving care, the service user used in this case study will be referred to as Julie. Julie is a 67 year old lady who was rushed to her local accident and emergency following an episode of acute chest pain and was suspected to have suffered from a myocardial infarction. Julie who lives alone reported she had been experiencing shortness of breath and
Cardiovascular disease is currently the leading cause of death in the United States. It is responsible for one in four deaths every year, about 600,000 mortalities. This disease affects men and women, as well as every ethnic group. Coronary artery disease is the most common cardiovascular disease, representing approximately 400,000 deaths per year of the aforementioned 600,000 total deaths from cardiovascular diseases as a whole. In 2010 alone, coronary artery disease cost the United States $108.9 billion for health care services, medication, and lost productivity. These chilling statistics, published every year by the American Medical Association, demonstrate the immediate need for new and innovative ways to prevent, detect, and treat coronary heart disease. This paper will explore the molecular biology behind the disease while explaining the current treatments and prevention that are available today, why they work and what can be done to improve them.
Today, cardiovascular disease is “the number one killer in the United States and the developed world” (Sapolsky, 2004, p. 41). Coronary heart disease (CHD) is the most common form of cardiovascular disease, and is responsible for claiming an unreasonable amount of lives every year. CHD can begin to accumulate in young adults, but is prominently found in both men and women in their later adult lives. As a result of CHD, men typically experience heart attacks, whereas women present with chest pains, known as angina (Matthews, 2005).
A heart attack is a serious condition that results in long term damage to survivors’ hearts. For example, scar tissue from a heart attack can weaken or harden the heart muscle, causing it to be less elastic, and as those tissues spread into the aorta, the heart muscle can no longer complete a full contraction. These conditions could lead to heart failure immediately or over time. Heart transplants are one way to avoid these conditions, but donor hearts are in short supply. Recently, an alternative gene therapy has been tested and proven successful in pigs who have suffered heart attacks. Researchers came to this conclusion by assigning eighteen pigs who were recovering from heart attacks to receive injections of the Cyclin A2 gene that was exp...
The primary concern for Mr. Miller would be preventing further ischemia and necrosis of the myocardial tissues, preventing serious complications such as cardiac dysrhythmias and heart failure, as well as relieving his chest pain that radiates to his left arm. Preventing further ischemia and necrosis of the myocardial tissue will help prevent the development of heart failure due to myocardial infarction, whereas relieving his pain will help reduce his episodes of shortness of breath, and will also help to reduce any anxiety and restlessness he may be having from being in pain and short of breath.
One of the leading causes of death in the United States is heart disease. “Approximately every 29 seconds one American will have a heart attack, and once a minute one American will die from a heart attack” (Ford-Martin and Odle, 915). According to the Gale Encyclopedia of Alternative Medicine men over the age of 45 and women over the age of 55 are considered at risk for heart disease. Heart disease is a major cause of death. It is beneficial to individuals who seek to prevent heart disease to recognize the risks leading to heart attacks as they are one of the primary indications of developing heart disease; especially those that fall into the at risk age groups. These risks consist of some that cannot be changed such as heredity risks, or those that can change such as smoking habits. It is very important to know these specific risks for prevention and to understand the symptoms of heart attacks, such as sweating or the feeling of weakness so if these or other symptoms occur people are aware. Finally heart disease treatment is of vital importance if you experience a heart attack so you can learn how to prevent another one from occurring.
These causes will change the heart significantly. The pathophysiology of heart failure is described differently as: (1) an oedematous disorder, by means of which the deviations in renal hemodynamics and excretory ability lead to salt and water holding; (2) a hemodynamic disorder, considered by peripheral vasoconstriction and decreased cardiac output; (3) a neurohormonal disorder, mainly by stimulation of the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system and adrenergic nervous system; (4) an inflammatory syndrome, related with amplified local and circulation pro-inflammatory cytokines; (5) a myocardial disease, started with an damage to the heart trailed by pathological ventricular transformation. In heart failure, the heart sustains either a sudden or longstanding structural injury. When damage occurs, sequences of firstly compensatory but consequently maladaptive mechanisms follow (Henry & Abraham, ).
Regenerative medicine also seeks to understand the ability of a tissue or organ to repair itself. Many adult tissue contain stem cells but are at times not functional or is impaired by disease. Using factors to activate and promote instrinsic repair in a diseased organ opens up whole new prospect for therapies targeted toward many degenerative diseases.[9]
Bioengineering is a truly fascinating and prolific field, from which we will be sure to see many advances in the future. Currently, researchers are even devising a process of scanning large wounds and printing stem cells directly onto the patient to repair it. Many things that were previously science fiction are now becoming a reality thanks to a massive team of doctors, researchers, and engineers working to implement organogenesis into common medicine, truly making this exciting new process the future of regenerative medicine.