For generations, medicine accepted that the heart, once wounded by attack, could not mend its deepest tissue — that the scar was the final word. Researchers at the University of Sydney and the Baird Institute have now challenged that long-held certainty, demonstrating for the first time in living human heart tissue that new muscle cells do emerge after a heart attack. The regeneration is modest, even fragile, but its existence reframes what recovery might one day mean for the hundreds of thousands living in the shadow of heart failure.
Human hearts can regrow muscle after attack, study shows
Heart attacks destroy up to one-third of heart cells; many survivors develop heart failure, with only ~115 transplants available annually in Australia for 144,000 patients.