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TOKYO: The monthly discomfort many women see as a curse could pay
off someday as Japanese researchers say menstrual blood can be used
to repair heart damage.
Scientists obtained menstrual blood from nine
women and cultivated it for about a month, focusing on a kind of
cell that can act like stem cells.
Some 20 percent of the cells began beating
spontaneously about three days after being put together in vitro
with cells from the hearts of rats. The cells from menstrual blood
eventually formed sheet-like heart-muscle tissue.
The success rate is 100 times higher than the
0.2 percent to 0.3 percent for stem cells taken from human bone
marrow, according to Shunichiro Miyoshi, a cardiologist at Keio
University’s school of medicine, who is involved in the research.
Separate in-vivo experiments showed that the
condition of rats who had suffered heart attacks improved after they
received the cells derived from menstrual blood.
Miyoshi said women may eventually be able to use
their own menstrual blood.
“There may be a system in the near future that
allows women to use it for their own treatment,” Miyoshi told
Agence France-Presse on Thursday.
The cells can be stored for a long time in a
tube the size of a pinky finger and cultivated when necessary, he
said.
Miyoshi also said menstrual blood could be used
to build stockpiles of cells which have a variety of immune types.
This could help people with matching HLAs, or
human leukocyte antigens, a key part of the human immune system, he
said.
“In proper storage, we would be able to stock
up a tremendous count of cells in a small space. If they are not
used for 100 years, they could stay there for 200 years or 300
years” waiting for a perfect match, he said.
In a strict sense, the connective cells
harvested from menstrual blood cannot be called stem cells, which
can turn into any type of cell in the body, Miyoshi said. But they
also have high potential to develop into muscle cells, suggesting
the blood could in time be used to treat muscular dystrophy, he
said.
The study has been conducted jointly by
researchers from private Keio University and the National Institute
for Child Health and Development.
Initial results were recently published in the
online edition of the US journal Stem Cell.
-- AFP
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