Question

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (2015), cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of deaths in the United States, equating to about 1 in every 4 deaths, even though CVD is largely preventable. Recently, various studies have shown promise with stem cell therapy treating heart disease. Research stem cell therapy in the treatment of heart disease and the possible promises it has as a therapy. In your post, address the following questions. Should science and healthcare professionals pursue this a treatment option for heart disease? Why or why not? What obstacles and issues would scientists need to overcome in order for stem cell therapy to become a mainstream treatment for heart disease? Which types of CVD could be treated with stem cell therapy? What kind of financial/societal impacts would stem cell therapy have on the healthcare system?

Answer 1

Cardiovascular diseases have been a leading cause of mortality rates among the people in United States.The healthcare industry have to face a strong challenge to evolve treatment measures to reduce these mortality rates. One of the recent measure is use of stem cells in treatment of cardiovascular diseases which has developed as a boon in the area of disease management. Although it has not been successfully proven to treat all the CVDs but the major diseases like heart failure, angina and myocardial infaraction can be treated with stem cell therapy.

The are mainly two types of stem cell that are considered. One is the skeletal myoblasts, which can be harvested after 2-3 weeks of culture and then implanted into the area of scar into the heart for muscle sustitution. The other type of stem cell is derived from bone marrow, It the true stem cell which may develop into variety of other tissue. Angiogenesis and myogenesis are the two proposed mechanism of action behind these stem cell therapy.

The stem cell therapy for the damaged heart has still to be proven fully safe and beneficial. Although the trials assessing the use of stem cells for treating heart disease have found to give positive outcomes and encouraging results, the most effective approach have yet to be determined which will require other conducted clinical trials. Moreover, very few patients are found who opt for these method of treatment.

There are various obstacles and issues which the scientist have to face and are facing in order to use stem cell for CVDs:

• Learning more about the stem cell properities in relation to the disease behaviour.
• Developing a standardized protocol for stem cell isolation and preparation so that the outcomes are reliable and consistent at every use.
• Understanding the disease progression , so that the doctor knows how and when to inoculate stem cell therapy for lasting results.
• Ethical issues with embryonic stem cell generation, research and treatments.
• Controlling and regulating the dvelopment of the stem cell to a particular stem cell after its isolation. It is also called differentiation.
• Prevention of immunorejection after stem cell transplantation.
• Scientific and governmental regulation that slows down the process.
• Identification of the adult stem cells.
• Generating enough quantities of stem cell needed for treatment.

As stated earlier stem cells can be used to treat heart failure and myocardial infaraction. The use of stem cells in treating other cardiac disease is under research. Financially the cost of isolating, regenerating and transplantation of the stem cell is costly. The cost raises even further if the human donar is selected or in embryonic stem cell generation. This will have a great impact on the health care industry. There various ethical issues that have been raised by the society regarding the use of human embryos for stem cell regeneration. This slows down the process of research and the implementaion of the stem cell therapy.