WEDNESDAY, August 13, (News Locale) - The heart suffers irreversible damage after a heart attack and before this damage heals, another cardiac event occurs despite medications. Researchers have now come up with a seaweed gel that can repair damaged hearts after heart attack and prevent additional damage. 

This gel has been developed by Israeli researchers who say it worked in an animal study. Here 90 percent of the animals who received the gel injections were able to survive a heart attack as compared to just 40 percent of animals that received no treatment.

Professor Smedar Cohen led the team which developed the gel at the Ben Gurion University in Israel.

The researchers say the gel when injected into a vein in the groin solidifies on the area of the heart, where the tissue has been damaged by an attack. The gel, made from ordinary seaweed, is injected through the vein, which is linked to a catheter.

The researchers have begun testing the gel on humans in trials being conducted in Germany, Belgium and Israel

When a cardiac event like a heart attack occurs, it damages sensitive tissue in the heart leaving it vulnerable to another attack because the heart is not able to pump blood properly. As per the researchers of the current study, the gel in question acts as a support scaffold to the damaged tissue letting the heart resume its normal function, thus preventing another attack.

If results in human trials prove positive, the gel could hit markets in the next three years.

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