Doctors Say They've Found a 'Game Changing' Stem Cell Treatment for MS

Interim results of the international stem cell transplant study showed that the success rate is much higher than that of the control group receiving medication. MS affects the brain, spinal cord and the immune system and causes many disorders. Stem cell therapy uses chemotherapy to destroy the patient's immune system and then "restarts" the stem cells in the blood and bone marrow of patients who do not suffer from this disease.

Only 100 people participated in the research in the four cities of Chicago, Sao Paulo, Sheffield (UK), Uppsala, Sweden. They all have relapsing-remitting MS and the symptomatic "relapse" phase alternates with remission phase. After one year of treatment, only one patient who received stem cell therapy relapsed compared to 39 of the control group.

In the mean follow-up of 3 years after treatment, stem cells failed in 6% (3 out of 52 recipients), but 60% of medication failed (30 out of 50). The results were announced at the annual meeting of the bone marrow bone marrow transplantation association in Lisbon

A neurologist at the Royal Hallamshire hospital stated to the BBC that it was the best result seen in all tests of multiple sclerosis, but the warning was preliminary.

This study is the largest of its kind and also supports a small trial indicating that stem cell transplantation is effective. Because this treatment has proven to be more dangerous than medical treatment, it is controversial in the neurological world. In the previous exam, 8 out of 281 participants died

Canadian physicians used stem cells to recover severe MS and successfully eliminated them from the patient. Prior to joining the study involving chemotherapy and stem cell bone marrow transplantation in 2002, Jennifer Molson suffered from a serious illness. Molson is one of 24 small groups of high-risk experimental treatments. The experience of this queue was documented in a paper published in Lancet magazine this week. It is the first time to explain every MS treatment and to prevent illness for a long time without MS medication. "This is the first treatment to bring about this level of disease management and neurological recovery." From MS, "Lancet" told a news conference.

Blood stem cells are present in bone marrow. They belong to the immune system and can find various kinds of cells in the blood, including several cells involved in causing MS damage. MS patients grafted their own blood stem cells to "reset" the immune system. The patient's existing immune cells are first killed using chemotherapy (treated with a powerful medicine). After that, blood stem cells removed from the patient's own bone marrow are injected into the bloodstream to create new immune cells that do not attack human nerve cells. This approach shows the benefits of relapsing-remitting MS patients, but not with progressive MS patients. This is also a dangerous treatment with 1-2% possible mortality due to the immune system's inhibition.