It has previously been thought that the human heart starts beating for the very first time around day 21 after conception.
But now some new research at the University of Oxford in the UK has found that a baby’s first heartbeat happens as early as 16 days after conception and that this, they figure, can lead to a breakthrough in understanding – and treating – congenital heart disease.
Until now, researchers thought that the first time our heart muscle contracted to beat was at eight days after conception in mice which equates to around day 21 of a human pregnancy. But now, this new study, which was funded by the British Heart Foundation (BHF), discovered that it is actually far earlier.
“We are trying to better understand how the heart develops, and ultimately what causes the heart defects that develop in the womb before birth and to extrapolate to adult heart repair,” Professor Paul Riley, who led the research at the University of Oxford, explained to the Daily Mail.
“By finding out how the heart first starts to beat and how problems can arise in heart development, we are one step closer to being able to prevent heart conditions from arising during pregnancy. We also hope that this new research will help us to learn how the beating of new heart muscle cells might be triggered in replaced muscle after a heart attack.”
In fact, in the study, published only yesterday in the scientific journal eLife, researchers tell how the discovered that in mice, the heart muscle started to contract as soon as it formed the cardiac crescent – an early stage in heart development. In mice, this crescent forms 7.5 days after conception, which is equivalent to day 16 in the human embryo.
The most important outcome of this study, according to Riley, is that, hopefully, we will learn more about how the heart forms in the womb, and that this might help develop better and more effective treatments for congenital heart disease.
The research into diagnosing and treatment is important, as congenital heart disease is diagnosed in around 4,000 babies a year in the UK alone.
