Bone marrow transfer BOOST for heart attack victims:
This article was originally published in Clinica
Executive Summary
Injecting a person's own bone marrow cells directly into their heart after angioplasty to treat a heart attack improves heart function, long-term data from a study of the technique have revealed. Previous six-month data from the study, called BOOST, showed that intracoronary transfer of autologous bone marrow cells after angioplasty significantly improved left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) - a measure of the heart's pumping ability - compared to a control group. According to MRI analysis after 16 months, LVEF improved by 7.3% in the cell transfer patients, compared to just 2.7% for the controls. The findings were presented by Dr Gerd Meyer and colleagues, of the Medical School, in Hanover, Germany, at this month's American Heart Association meeting in New Orleans.