Researchers developed a polymer-based therapy that can be injected following a heart attack that helps heart tissue heal. After administering it to rats, they demonstrated that it works up to five weeks later, they reported in the journal Advanced Materials.
Heart attacks are a major health issue in the U.S., with about 805,000 people a year experiencing them — the equivalent of one every 40 seconds. About 12 percent of people who experience a heart attack will die from it.
“Preventing heart failure after a heart attack is still a major unmet clinical need,” Karen Christman, a bioengineering professor at the University of California, Davis and an author of the study, said in a press release. “The goal of this therapy is to intervene very soon after someone suffers a heart attack to keep them from ultimately going into heart failure.”
