A cardiac arrest, in which the muscles of the heart stop because they are starved of oxygen, can lead to severe tissue damage. This severely hampers the chances of a patient making a full recovery.
Free radicals can cause sufficient damage to cell DNA to trigger individual cells to die.
Once the blood flow is re-established by doctors following a heart attack, these molecules move to other areas of tissue and can cause widespread cell death and the formation of scar tissue. Encouraging results The more scar tissue replaces heart muscle, the less efficient the heart will be at pumping blood. The new drug, developed by Wake Forest University School of Medicine, has been tested on animal hearts - and the results have been encouraging. In rats, the drug M40403, administered after heart attack but before the blood flow has been fully restored, seemed to have a protective effect against the free radicals. More animal studies need to be completed before we can move to clinical trials, but I am optimistic.