This story describes a medical research protocol that will determine whether patients with heart attacks and congestive heart failure can be helped with their own bone marrow stem cells. The difference between stem cell treatments and existing therapies is profound: “The potential new benefit from stem cell therapy is the ability to prevent [heart] muscle loss, whereas other options compensate for muscle loss.” In other words, if the stem cell therapy works, the patient will literally be better biologically, whereas the heart drugs for the condition currently in use seek to circumvent and overcome the dysfunction caused by underlying disease.
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