GENE therapy could be used instead of pacemakers to steady irregular beating
of the heart, say Kevin Donahue and his colleagues at Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine in Baltimore.
Erratic heart rhythms occur when electrical signals from the heart’s upper
chambers travel to the lower chambers too quickly. Donahue’s team injected pig
hearts with a virus carrying the gene for an inhibitory protein that slows down
electrical signals. Erratic hearts treated with this gene beat 20 per cent
slower than those treated with a control, the team found (Nature
Medicine, vol 6, p 1395).
The researchers will now…
