Rickmansworth Carpenter participates in pioneering heart study

A Rickmansworth man is participating in a pioneering trial which looks at whether gene therapy can help patients awaiting heart transplants. Lee Adams, 37, is the first of the 24 patients with advanced heart failure to be recruited for the study led by Imperial College London. The former carpenter found out he has a serious heart condition in 2011 after what he believed was a chest infection. Lee said: “It was obviously a great shock to me and my family to go from being what I thought was fit and healthy, to being bed bound for over a month with my legs wasting away. The left side of Lee’s heart was saved and he was fitted with a mechanical pump to keep blood flowing. The British Heart Foundation and Celladon Corporation funded trial includes sixteen randomly chosen patients to be treated with the corrective gene to help strengthen the heartbeat; the other eight will receive placebo therapy. The therapy involves injecting a harmless virus into the bloodstream to carry the gene to the heart muscle cells; after six months the heart will be examined to see if the gene is present and functioning. Lee added: “Of course the best thing that could happen would be for my heart function to show signs of improvement and for the gene therapy to prove to be a ‘miracle cure’ for myself and other patients.” “But I’m not building my hopes up too much because for all I know I might have had the placebo.”