The muscle cells that make up the heart organ in a human body are formed during the development of an embryo before birth. However, the cluster of the muscle cells stops generating and grouping once the gestation phase is over.
This downside is a common factor that induces long-term heart conditions in many individuals. The ability of the organ to regenerate and multiple its muscle cells is beneficial, but with the limits of the natural process, people are forced to undergo treatments for cardiovascular illnesses that do not match what the cellular capacities of the heart can do.
Regeneration of Lost Heart Cells Now Possible
Because of this conundrum, experts from Johns Hopkins Medicine conducted a study to maintain the heart and its muscle cells through neuromodulation. The main goal of the research is to obtain a process that could manipulate the nerve cells and even genes in hopes of forming new muscles cells of the heart. Through this approach, cardiovascular diseases could be lessened, and the proper functions of the organ could be restored once more after losing billions of muscle cells upon cardiac conditions and heart attacks.
Alongside the development of muscle cell regeneration in the heart, the authors were also able to discover several factors from brain cells or neurons that could help regulate the muscle cells in the organ. Nerve cells have been a topic in previous studies regarding the restoration of heart functions. However, the definitive answer to why and how the nerve cells contribute to the development and maintenance of muscle cells remains unsolved up to this date.
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine medicine expert and lead author of the study Emmanouil Tampakakis said in a MedicalXpress report that their investigation's principal interest is to determine the purpose of sympathetic neurons to the development of the heart after the phase of gestation and birth.
The expert said that their team successfully identified the significant impacts of the nerve cells if they are triggered to a certain extent. Based on the results, the sympathetic cells could regulate the collective rate of muscles cells inside the heart, even if it is naturally impossible after birth.
Link Between Sympathetic Nervous System and Heart Muscle Cells
The specified nerve cells are found in the sympathetic nervous system or SNS, a region responsible for the automatic functions in a person's body. These processes include the beat of the heart, respiration in the lungs, and digestion in the stomach. The SNS is typically correlated to the natural fight-or-flight warning response of the nervous system whenever it detects alarming situations and stressful scenarios.
The study on regulating the muscle cells was made possible through the help of mouse subjects. During the experiment, the subjects under embryonic development were blocked from the supply of sympathetic heart neurons. By this observation, the experts analyzed the factors that initiate the regeneration of muscle cells in a limited amount of days after birth.
The study concluded that by removing the circadian cycle controllers called period one and period two genes from the embryos, their neonatal heart increased in size due to the additional 10 percent rate of muscle cells called cardiomyocytes. The results imply that the pair of modified circadian clock genes are linked to the sympathetic nerves on heart muscle cells. The study was published in the journal ScienceAdvances, titled "Heart neurons use clock genes to control myocyte proliferation."
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