Single injection could help patients recover after heart attacks: World’s first trial

On an average, Myocardial Infarction a Cardiovascular disease (CVD) claims the life of one person every three minutes. More than 20% patients of heart attacks have severe ongoing difficulties because of lasting damage to heart muscle despite the best available therapies, often resulting in patients developing long-term heart failure, associated with increased morbidity and mortality. Heart failure has a poor prognosis: 30 to 40 per cent of patients diagnosed die within a year, according to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence , UK (NICE).

Professor Noel Caplice, the chairperson of Cardiovascular Sciences at UCC, and his colleagues at Cork University Hospital have shown that low dose insulin-like growth factor can help repair damage to the heart. In Path-breaking research, it has been found that a single injection could repair damaged hearts - offering hope for patients who suffer a heart attack

In a trial first of its kind in the world , 47 patients, who had all experienced large heart attacks, took part. They received two different low dose preparations of insulin-like growth factor(IGF1). or placebo. People who received the higher dose showing improved remodelling of their heart muscle in the two-month follow-up after their heart attack, which correlated with other measures of improved heart performance.

Professor Noel Caplice said: “We are delighted that an important human study like this could be funded in Ireland and performed in Cork.“This pilot trial is the first of its kind worldwide showing that single injection of low dose IGF1 is safe and can improve cardiac repair after a large heart attack.

We hope that these findings can be replicated in potentially larger trials of many hundred subjects in the future. A significant minority of our patients currently remain unwell after a large heart attack despite best clinical practice and we are excited by the possibility that cardiac repair therapy may help these patients.

If future bigger trials are successful, the growth factor could be applied more widely to improve the quality of life and life expectancy of patients who have suffered a large heart attack, and be financially beneficial to the health service by reducing ongoing care costs.

The research has been recognised and peer-reviewed by the European Society of Cardiology and the trial has been presented for the first time at the organisation’s Heart Failure 2017 conference in Paris .

The trial was funded by a €1 million grant under a joint research programme run by the Health Research Board (HRB) and Science Foundation Ireland (SFI).

If future bigger trials are successful, the growth factor could be applied more widely to improve the quality of life and life expectancy of patients who have suffered a large heart attack, and be financially beneficial to the health service by reducing ongoing care costs.