Stem cell therapies appear to be promising for heart disease, according to the latest Cochrane review. The review suggests that stem cell therapies tend to work as a complement to standard treatments.

According to the review, the therapies can possibly help to reduce the number of deaths after a year. The stem cell therapies were used for chronic ischaemic heart disease and congestive heart failure. The review notes that retrieving stem cells from a patient’s bone marrow and injecting them into damaged hearts can be an effective way to treat heart disease.

The review, which was published in The Cochrane Library on Apr. 29, relied on data from 1,255 people in 23 randomized control trials. During these trials, every participant received a standard treatment.

Stem cell therapy that used bone marrow cells resulted in fewer deaths from heart disease or heart failure, when compared to standard treatment alone or in conjunction with a placebo. The likelihood of patients being readmitted to the hospital was reduced and the patients’ heart function improved.

Researchers caution that with larger clinical trials underway, it is important to wait for those findings to ensure the certainty of the effects.

Dr. Enca Martin-Rendon, author of the review, Cochrane Heart Review Group, and based at NHS Blood and Transplant and the University of Oxford in the UK, said in a statement, “This is encouraging evidence that stem cell therapy has benefits for heart disease patients. However, it is generated from small studies and it is difficult to come to any concrete conclusions until larger clinical trials that look at longer- term effects are carried out.”