Three men who suffered from amyloidosis of the heart (a disease in which toxic proteins accumulate in the tissues of the heart that cause heart failure) spontaneously recovered from this disease, Gazeta.ru reports citing information from The New England Journal of Medicine.
Typically, the prognosis for this disease is poor, with about half of patients dying within four years of diagnosis. The cause of irreversible heart failure is the toxic amyloid protein transthyretin.
Three men aged 68, 76 and 82 years old were diagnosed with transthyretin cardiac amyloidosis, but later they showed a positive trend. Patients reported improved well-being to doctors, and their cardiovascular scans confirmed the disappearance of amyloid proteins from heart tissue.
Instead of a toxic protein, antibodies were found in the hearts of spontaneously cured patients that destroyed transthyretin. This case is practically unique, since no positive changes were found in the remaining 350 patients, their disease continued to progress.
Doctors are gathering evidence that these antibodies are the cause of the self-healing of amyloidosis. If this hypothesis is confirmed, it will be possible to use such antibodies as a therapy for amyloidosis.