Heart recipients add their own cells
By Nathan Seppa
Transplanted hearts incorporate muscle and blood-vessel cells from the organs recipient, researchers report in the Jan. 3 New England Journal of Medicine. The work suggests that the heart may be capable of regenerating its own tissue.
Researchers took tissue samples from eight transplanted hearts in men who had died. The hearts all had come from female donors. This sex difference enabled the scientists to readily distinguish donor heart cells from host cells, since male cells contain a Y chromosome and female cells dont. Between 7 and 10 percent of muscle and blood-vessel cells sampled in the donor hearts came from the male recipients.