Cardiomyocyte Renewal in Humans

Abstract

To the Editor: In a recent review article by Leri, Kajstura, and Anversa1 in Circulation Research , there are several misrepresentations and factual errors in the description of our study on birth dating of heart cells.2 These errors affect their conclusions, and it is thus important to make some clarifications. First, Leri et al1 claim that we analyzed 12 pathological hearts, which is incorrect. Briefly, only 1 of the 12 studied subjects had a history of cardiac disease (a previous myocardial infarction) and was the only individual who had heart enlargement or any medication for cardiovascular disease (nitrates). Another individual died of acute myocardial infarction and displayed myocardial hypertrophy and moderate coronary sclerosis at autopsy. Of the remaining 10 individuals, 4 had slight myocardial hypertrophy, slight coronary sclerosis, and/or slight fibrosis detected at autopsy, and 1 of these had hypertension. The remaining 6 of the 12 studied individuals had neither a history of cardiovascular disease nor any sign of cardiac pathology at autopsy. Detailed information, including all of the above, was provided in our original study (Table S2), and we addressed the potential role of cardiac pathology in some of the included cases in our original publication.2 Second, Leri et al1 claim that we assessed the birth date of a …