New injection shows promising results for treating one of Australia's biggest killers

The new formula is yet to be tested on humans but has shown positive improvements on animals.

New injection shows promising results for treating one of Australia's biggest killers. Image: iStock

Reasearchers from Sydney’s Westmead Institute of Medical Research have developed an injection formula that could offer an effective treatment for coronary heart disease.

A new injection formula has been developed by researchers at Sydney’s Westmead Institute of Medical Research that is showing promising results when treating scar tissue on the heart.

The formula is designed to be injected into the wall of a damaged heart to reduce long-term scarring, a process which has the potential to reduce the number of deaths as a result of a heart attack.

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Researchers have been manipulating the protein tropoelastin in a trial on damaged animal hearts and say that the injection has visibly improved scarring.

When a human suffers a heart attack, the heart muscles deplete or die, causing the body to replace the damaged areas with scar tissue to keep it functioning.

When this happens, the heart is less elastic and becomes restrictive in its movements, meaning that additional heart attacks are harder for the heart to fight off, increasing the risk of death.

The injection targets scar tissue in the heart. Image: iStock

"That heart muscle dies and it's replaced by a stiff collagen scar," researcher Dr Robert Hume told 9News.

"We wanted to see if we could actually change the scar and make it more flexible."

By improving the flexibility of scar tissue with the tropoelastin injection, researchers have found that the heart’s function shows drastic improvement in its general functioning pumping blood around the body.

Coronary heart disease was the leading cause of death for men and second largest cause for women in the year of 2022. Image: iStock

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reported that coronary heart disease was the leading cause of death for men and second largest cause for women in the year of 2022.

With an average of one heart attack every 10 minutes in Australia, researchers are hopeful that the study will soon be implemented on humans, once the technological elements are refined.

Originally published as New injection shows promising results for treating one of Australia's biggest killers