Ghost Heart: The Cure to Broken Hearts
According
to the World Health Organization (WHO), cardiovascular diseases are the
top killers globally. By 2030, it is predicted that the number of
people who die because of heart diseases will reach up to 23.3 million
(WHO 2013). From these statistics, it can be seen that the heart is very
crucial because once it collapse, it will lead to death. The heart is
source of life. Without it, life will cease to exist.
Because
of this, the search for the technology to replace a broken heart is
still on. For the past few years, through different breakthroughs in
medicine, doctors and scientists discovered that the heart of a deceased
person can still be used. Because of this, they learned to transplant
the heart from a dead body, to the sick person. Nonetheless, there are
still problems involved in this kind of surgery. Since the heart is
still another person’s organ, rejection (the body rejecting the
transplanted organ) will occur; Because of this, the patient will be
forced to use immunosuppressants which will reduce the strength of
his/her immune system, which will eventually lead to a lot more
complications.
However,
recently in 2007, scientists was able to discover a technology that
involves the use of animal heart and stem cells (Derbyshire 2011). The
goal is to use the animal’s heart, and convert it into a new usable
human heart. This concept is called the Ghost Heart.
The
process starts by extracting the animal heart.
Then, special detergents
are pumped into the heart to clean and remove all the heart cells.
After this, the heart will then become whitish in color. What is left is
the heart’s “skeleton” or scaffold.
Finally, stem cells from the human
patient will be injected into the “ghost heart”, which will then adapt
and transform into new human heart cells. Because of this, the old
animal heart will become a new heart that humans can use.
When
put into the body of the human, the ghost heart will not experience
rejections because it already contains cells that originated from that
same body. (Derbyshire 2011)
With
the ghost heart, life will be free of heartaches. Life will be free of
rejections, and life will be free of complications. With just the use of
a simple animal heart, someone with a broken heart will be able to
experience again the exciting complexities of life.
Sources:
Derbyshire, David 2011. Live human heart grown in lab using stem cells in potential transplant
breakthrough. DailyMail.Co. Retrieved from:
m-cells-potential-transplant-breakthrough.html. March 20, 2014.
Maher, Brendan 2013. Tissue Engineering: How to build a heart. Nature.com. Retrieved from:
World Health Organization 2013. Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). World Health Organization.
Goodness Gracious! GOOD JOB GUYS :)
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