The intense pain of a heart attack could actually help patients, researchers have discovered.
They have found that during an attack - when a blood clot blocks an artery that is serving the heart with oxygen - pain signals from cardiac nerves help to attract stem cells to repair the damage.
The discovery has crucial implications, say the Bristol University scientists who carried out the study. Heart attack patients are routinely treated with morphine to ease the intense pain, but morphine operates by blocking pain-inducing substances, including the one that stimulates stem cell activity in artery walls. Its use could therefore have serious implications for a patient's long-term recovery.
"This is a key finding," said Jeremy Pearson, associate medical director of the British Heart Foundation), which co-funded the study with the European Union. "Other studies have indicated that morphine is associated with higher mortality in patients with acute coronary symptoms. This study provides further evidence that giving morphine to patients could have side-effects and means we are going to think very carefully about its use in heart attack cases. Obviously we want to ease pain, but not at the expense of long-term recovery."
This point is backed by Professor Paolo Madeddu, chair of experimental cardiovascular medicine at Bristol University, who led the study. He notes that pharmacological control of pain "could be detrimental" after heart attacks.
