Improvement of Heart Failure by Human Amniotic Mesenchymal Stromal Cell Transplantation in Rats

Recently, stem cells have been considered for the treatment of heart diseases, but no marked improvement has been recorded. This is the first study to examine the functional and histological effects of the transplantation of human amniotic mesenchymal stromal cells (hAMSCs) in rats with heart failure (HF).
This study was conducted in the years 2014 and 2015. 35 male Wistar rats were randomly assigned into 5 equal experimental groups (7 rats each) as 1- Control 2- Heart Failure (HF) 3- Sham 4- Culture media 5- Stem Cell Transplantation (SCT). Heart failure was induced using 170 mg/kg/d of isoproterenol subcutaneously injection in 4 consecutive days. The failure confirmed by the rat cardiac echocardiography on day 28. In SCT group, 3×106 cells in 150 µl of culture media were transplanted to the myocardium. At the end, echocardiographic and hemodynamic parameters together with histological evaluation were done.
Echocardiography results showed that cardiac ejection fraction in HF group increased from 58/73 ± 9% to 81/25 ± 6/05% in SCT group (p value The transplantation of hAMSCs in rats with heart failure not only decreased the level of fibrosis but also conferred significant improvement in heart performance in terms of echocardiographic and hemodynamic parameters.