The influence of disease and age on human cardiac stem cells

Recent studies have found that cardiac stem cells (CSCs) are present in the adult heart. CSCs play an important role in maintaining the balance of the number of myocardial cells. The purpose of this study was to examine characteristics of human CSCs and their correlation with clinical characteristics of patients. We collected heart auricles of 105 patients (age range, 1-78 years; mean, 55.6 ± 17.0 years) undergoing cardiac surgery to obtain CSCs. We assayed the percentage of c-kit positive (c-kit(+)) CSCs with flow cytometry. Plasma N(ɛ)-(carboxymethyl)lysine (CML) concentrations were measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. The percentage of c-kit(+) CSCs was 4.96 ± 3.12% (0.98-17.17%), and this was significantly negatively correlated with age, the presence of diabetes mellitus (DM) and coronary heart disease (CHD) (r values were -0.797 [P < 0.01], -0.500 [P < 0.01] and -0.250 [P = 0.011], respectively). The percentage of c-kit(+) CSCs was significantly negatively correlated with CML concentrations (r = -0.859, P < 0.01). The percentage of c-kit(+) CSCs decreases with ageing and is further decreased in patients with DM and/or CHD. Furthermore, plasma CML concentrations may have potential as an indicator of the number of c-kit(+) CSCs.