Stem Cell Therapy For Cardiovascular Diseases
As an advanced treatment method, stem cell therapy has shown it can improve cardiac function by increasing myocardial capillary density, regenerating cardiomyocytes, reducing apoptosis, alleviating fibrosis during the treatment of cardiovascular diseases, and have significant improvement in cardiac function after treatment.
The Beneficial Effects Of Stem Cell Therapy On Cardiovascular Diseases
Stem cell transplantation can regenerate the myocardium and improve cardiac function and is an ideal choice for the treatment of acute myocardial infarction, ischemic heart disease, ischemia-reperfusion injury of the heart, and other cardiovascular diseases. At SQ1 medical center, we provide you with a customized stem cell therapy plan, after the treatment course and cooperating with the doctor’s diet plan and lifestyle advice, 83% of the patients reported significant treatment effects, and the related symptoms are greatly improved.
Stem cell therapy at SQ1 helps:
Reduce fibrosis
Repair damaged myocardial tissue
Improve cardiac function
Promote angiogenesis
Increased cardiac ejection function score
Normalization of heart rhythm
Alleviate heart failure symptoms (edema, dyspnea, tachycardia)
Improve limb function
Reduce muscle atrophy
Reduce or eliminate inflammation
Cardiovascular Diseases That Stem Cell Therapy Can Treat
Ischemic heart disease (coronary heart disease/myocardial infarction)
Peripheral Arterial Disease (PAD)
Ischemic stroke
Arrhythmia
Hypertension
Heart failure
Valvular heart disease
Congenital heart disease
Coronary Artery Disease (CAD)
Cardiomyopathy
Aortic disease
Pulmonary embolism
Deep vein thrombosis
On November 13-15,2021, the 2021 American Heart Association Annual Conference was held online, and reported the latest results of the clinical result of the largest stem cell therapy for heart failure (DREAM-HF trial): stem cell therapy can significantly reduce the risk of heart attack, stroke, and death in patients with chronic, high-risk, reduced ejection fraction heart failure (HFrEF), especially those with higher levels of inflammation.
Learn More About Cardiovascular Diseases
Cardiovascular diseases generally refer to cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, which is the general term for ischemic or bleeding diseases of the heart, brain, and other tissues over the body caused by hyperlipidemia, blood viscosity, atherosclerosis, hypertension, etc. In recent years, due to the improvement in living quality and changes in dietary structure, the incidence of cardiovascular disease is increasing, which seriously threatens human health.
Cardiomyocytes will be lost permanently after necrosis; The irreversible death of cardiomyocytes is one of the most important factors in the onset of heart diseases such as myocardial infarction and heart failure. Due to the limited regeneration capacity of cardiomyocytes, cardiovascular disease has become the “No.1 Killer” that threatens human health. The number of morbidity and mortality is increasing each year. Cardiovascular disease has become a major global public health issue.
Risk Factors For Cardiovascular Diseases
Cardiovascular diseases can be roughly divided into two categories: congenital and acquired diseases. Congenital factors include family inheritance or self-gene mutation, acquired factors are unhealthy lifestyle, other related diseases, and adverse drug reactions. The onset of the disease is often affected by a combination of factors.
Factor
Factor Description
Family inheritance
Family disease history: such as family members with chronic cardiovascular disease, especially early-onset patients at age <50 years.
Hereditary syndromes, those syndromes might affect the heart or blood vessels, causing corresponding cardiovascular diseases.
Congenital heart defect
Congenital structural or functional defects of the heart
Congenital vascular structural defects. these defects could lead to local vascular stenosis.
Autoimmune disease: Malfunction of the immune system, which will attach and damage own tissues and organs.
Diseases or drug factors
Infection by pathogens, such as viruses, bacteria, and scarring and inflammation of cardiovascular tissue caused by infection
Malignant tumors and the side effects from radiotherapy and chemotherapy against the tumor.
Various chronic liver and kidney diseases
Long-term heavy mental stress
Long-term use of prescription/over-the-counter medications, such as birth control pills or corticosteroids
Long-term use of certain dietary supplements or Chinese herbal medicine that may interfere with heart or vascular functions
Unhealthy living habits
Lack of physical activity
High-fat, high-sugar, high-salt diet
Chronic alcoholism
Injecting or intaking drugs
Overweight (or obese)
Clinical Symptoms Of Cardiovascular Diseases
Symptoms of cardiovascular diseases depend on the specific type of disease; it varies from type to type.
Disease
Common Symptoms
Cardiovascular diseases
Chest pain, tightness, pressure, and burning sensation spreading pain from the chest area
Insufficient blood and oxygen supply manifested as shortness of breath, irregular heartbeat, dizziness, weakness, fatigue, sweating, paleness, blue lips, and cold limbs.
The cardiac disease may also cause discomfort in other areas, such as upper abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, and swelling of the abdomen or extremities. Patients with severe symptoms may experience syncope and even shock.
Peripheral vascular diseases
The most common location of illness is in the legs for atherosclerosis or deep vein thrombosis. Pain, numbness, and weakness may occur in the affected area, and exercise may worsen the symptoms.
When the condition worsens, other symptoms like edema, ulcers, and spasms may occur and may lead to disability if not treated in time.
The deep vein thrombosis may fall off and enters the lung, it can cause pulmonary embolism manifested as chest and back pain, shortness of breath, rapid heartbeat, dry cough (with hemoptysis or bloody sputum), dizziness, restlessness, confusion, or even coma.
Cerebrovascular disease
Patients with stroke may show different degrees of central nervous system dysfunction, such as headache, dizziness, blurred vision, and loss of language ability
Weakness or numbness in the limbs, inability to walk or move, as well as balance problems.
Advantages Of Stem Cell Treatment For Cardiovascular Diseases
Currently, the conventional treatment method for cardiovascular diseases includes drug therapy, interventional therapy, and surgical therapy. Although those methods can improve cardiac function to a certain extent, they are not able to reverse the myocardial damage caused by ischemia. Patients can also choose heart transplantation to restore myocardial function, but the lack of donors, immune rejection, on and high costs limit the clinical application of heart transplantation as treatment for patients with late-stage heart diseases.
However, stem cell transplantation can overcome those drawbacks. Compared with conventional therapy, stem cell therapy has incomparable advantages：
Stem cell therapy
Conventional treatment
Curative Treatment or diseases management
Stem cell therapy is a new treatment for cardiovascular diseases, which aims to repair or regenerate damaged myocardial tissue, promote angiogenesis, and thus help the heart return to a healthy status and rebuild cardiac function.
If treated with stem cells at an early stage, damage to cardiac cells can be reversed. Stem cell therapy can also free you from drug dependence and surgery.
Conventional treatments for early-stage cardiovascular diseases include drug therapy and interventional therapy, both of which can only relieve some related symptoms, such as decreasing blood sugar/blood pressure, and reducing chest tightness, but cannot completely cure cardiovascular diseases.
Cardiomyocyte loss is irreversible, and cardiovascular disease caused by myocardial damage is considered incurable in conventional medicine.
Dosage
When stem cells repair damaged myocardial tissue and blood vessels, you will gradually restore normal heart function, and the dosage of drugs you are taking can be gradually reduced, and even interventional treatment can be avoided. Drug dependence can be completely reversed if treated with stem cells at an early stage.
Stem cell experts based on your current level of disease and other comorbidities will design a customized protocol and decide, the number of stem cells, source of stem cells, and cycles of stem cell therapy.
If you choose drug therapy for cardiovascular disease, you may find the dose of the medications is gradually increased, or you need to take the medications for life.
When drug treatment fails to control the progress of the disease condition, you may need to choose interventional treatment, but this is not a one-time-for-all solution, you need regular follow-up and may even need another interventional treatment.
Side-effects
No Side-effects as stem cells are our cells that are used to treat the disease and regenerate lung tissue to regain proper functioning.
Medications may have side effects on the digestive and nervous system, such as dry cough, edema, dizziness, headache, nausea, allergic reactions, etc.
Convenience
Stem cell therapy is performed by stem cell specialists which requires a special laboratory to process the stem cells and the medical set-up to extract and inject the stem cell.
The therapy is going to be injection-based and needs to be performed in a hospital.
It’s relatively easy to take medications, but the patient needs to take them repeatedly every day, which is prone to the development of drug dependence.
If you choose interventional or surgical treatment, the patient needs to be hospitalized for surgery, which is not ideal due to the trauma and high risk from the surgery.
Longevity
If treated in the early stage, in the long run, stem cell therapy can eliminate drug dependence, restore cardiovascular function (as all related clinical measurements return to normal), and return the patient to a healthy life. If conducted at a later stage, stem cell therapy can still reduce drug dependence, and in rare cases, you might need several treatment regimens. The endothelial stem cells we use improve the condition of not only the heart muscle, but also the coronary vessels.
The effect of drug therapy is short-term, and patients need to take medications daily, once stopped, the symptoms will resume or even worsen.
Interventional therapy is a one-time therapy, but if there is a recurrence or other unexpected conditions, another interventional therapy is needed, and its effect is not guaranteed for a lifetime.
End-stage
Stem cells are the fundamental part of our body, the main function of stem cells is to regenerate and repair damaged cells, produce new body cells thus repair and regenerate myocardial tissue thus delaying or avoiding the necessity to conduct kidney transplantation surgery.
Heart transplantation is the only treatment option for end-stage patients. Heart transplantation surgery is highly sophisticated with the risk of infections and rejection reactions. At the same time, limited donors, and high costs are important concerning factors for receiving heart transplantation.
How Can Stem Cell Therapy For Cardiovascular Diseases Work
Multidirectional differentiation into cardiomyocytes: In the myocardial microenvironment, the transplanted stem cells can differentiate into cardiomyocytes expressing myocardial-specific genes. This increases the number of cardiomyocytes, therefore improving the ejection function of the heart.
Multidirectional differentiation into vascular endothelial cells: Stem cells can be directly induced to differentiate into vascular endothelial cells by inducers such as vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF), insulin-like growth factor (IGF), epidermal growth factor (EGF), ascorbic acid and heparin. This effect will promote the formation of new blood vessels.
Anti-inflammation and anti-fibrosis: After the stem cells are infused back into the body, on one hand, they will inhibit the release of inflammatory factors, and inhibit inflammatory reactions in the cardiovascular system on time. On the other hand, the stem cells pretreated with endothelin-1 can enhance the anti-fibrotic function of the myocadiac tissue. In addition, scientific research has shown that stem cells have significant effects in improving cardiac function and reducing fibrosis by expressing hepatocyte growth factor (HGF).
Immunomodulatory effect: Stem cell immune regulation includes paracrine and immune cell regulation mechanisms. Various soluble factors produced and secreted by mesenchymal stem cells play an important role in immune regulation. For example, NO can not only inhibit the growth of T cells but also regulate immune cells by up-regulation of inducible nitric oxide synthase(iNOS). The immune regulatory effect of mesenchymal stem cells is exerted through immune suppression the proliferation and maturation of immune cells
SQ1 Stem Cell Services
During the whole treatment process, we’ll provide complete and first-class medical services to you. And to ensure your treatment effect, you can consult your doctor any time after the treatment.
