Improvement of Cardiac Function Following Men-strual Blood Stem Cells Administration by Prevention of Cartilaginous and Osseous Development in Rat Model ofMyocardial Infarction

Objective: Menstrual blood stem cells (MenSCs) are intro-duced as cells with high therapeutic potential in regenerative medicine. To prove the efficiency of MenSCs administration in myocardial infarction (MI) we assessed the effects of intramyo-cardial injection of MenSCs accompanied by their derived con-ditioned medium (CM) on cardiac function in MI rat model.Materials and Methods: All animals received human care ac-cording to the criteria outlined in declaration of Helsinki. The study was approved by bioethics committee of Avicenna Re-search Institute. ۴۰ rats were randomly divided into four groups including sham, MI (PBS), CM, and MenSCs + CM. Echocar-diography and histopathological evaluation were performed at day ۷ and ۲۸ days post-MI.Results: The results demonstrated significant improvement of cardiac function in terms of ejection fraction (EF) and frac-tional shortening (FS) after MenSCs + CM injection at day ۷ (P<۰.۰۵) and day ۲۸ (P<۰.۰۰۱) compared to MI group. In ad-dition, transplantation of MenSCs + CM resulted in higher FS and EF compared to CM-received group (P<۰.۰۵ and P<۰.۰۵ respectively) at day ۲۸. Histological and immunohistochemical analyses indicated that administration of MenSCs + CM led to the survival of cardiomyocytes, modulate inflammatory phase, promote neo-angiogenesis, prevent the formation of metaplas-tic changes and mitochondrial transfer from MenSCs to cardio-myocytes and non-cardiomyocytes. Moreover, MenSCs evoked inhibition of nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) expression, bone mor-phogenetic protein-۲ (BMP-۲) up-regulation and amplifying osteocalcin signaling in preserved cardiomyocytes.Conclusion: MenSCs accompanied by CM ameliorated the function of cardiac, prevented metaplastic development, and spurred cardiomyocyte survival following MI.