Biological defibrillator to treat irregular heartbeat developed by Rambam, Technion
Researchers at the Rambam Healthcare Campus and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa have succeeded in using genetic engineering to treat heart rhythm disorders in their labs.
The researchers were able to produce a receptor causing a biological process that regulates the electrical activity in the heart.
Patients will be able to activate the receptor themselves through a tiny dose of medicine that will act only on a specific area of the heart and only in real time of a heart rhythm disturbance. This, they say, is a groundbreaking development: a kind of biological defibrillator.
Many suffer from heart rhythm disorders
Cardiac arrhythmias are characterized by a feeling of beats that are out-of-rhythm, missed, too fast or slow that exceeds the norm – which is between 60 and 100 beats per minute. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis suffer from heart rhythm disorders, most of them as a result of a disruption in electrical activity.
This causes chest pain, shortness of breath, fatigue, dizziness and weakness to the point of fainting; they can even be life-threatening.
Researchers all over the world have been trying to find solutions to regulate the disorders, until now without success – even though there are various drugs that change the electrical activity of the heart and are used to treat arrhythmias.
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