Injection tricks the body into healing heart failure, according to study

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An injection that helps heart failure patients by "fooling" their immune system could save thousands of lives a year.

Patients with mild heart failure were 39 per cent less likely to die or need to go to hospital when given the "immune modulation therapy" jabs, a U.S. study found.

The technique involves damaging a small number of blood cells to trick the body into producing anti-inflammatory cells that heal the damaged heart, for example in the aftermath of a heart attack.

Around 11,000 people die from heart failure in the UK each year, according to Government figures.

Professor Guillermo Torre-Amione, who led the research at the Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas, said: "These are probably the best results we have ever seen in a heart failure study."

Of 2,426 patients in the study - published today in The Lancet medical journal - half were given the real jabs, with the rest given a dummy, placebo injection.

In the next 22 weeks, 399 given the real injection died or were admitted to hospital, compared with 429 of those given the placebo - an 8 per cent boost.

However, patients with no previous history of heart failure had 26 per cent less risk, while those with early heart failure had a 39 per cent reduced risk.