Stem cell therapy for ms8/3/2023 Some, however, had disease that was progressing “like a runaway train”, he said. ![]() More than half the patients returned to gainful employment, maintained their relationships, got back their driver’s licence.” Some people who had lost their vision were seeing. “Some people hadn’t walked and started walking. “There were some fairly profound and wonderful changes that some of them experienced,” said Freedman. They then used a combination of three toxic drugs to destroy each patient’s immune system before transplanting the cleaned-up stem cells in to the body. In the process, the Canadian doctors removed stem cells from the bone marrow of the patients and processed these in a laboratory. The patient in the transplant group who died suffered very severe liver damage and a bacterial infection which caused sepsis, or blood poisoning. Never before have doctors used the aggressive drug regimen used in Canada – a therapy that totally destroys the immune system, putting patients at risk for a while from life-threatening infections. Stem cell transplants have been carried out before in MS patients, but those people had a relapse after a couple of years. Those who are badly affected, usually young, progressively lose the ability to control their limbs. The disease attacks instead the insulating myelin sheath, which is essential for the proper functioning of the nervous system. Multiple sclerosis is caused by a malfunction of the immune system, which ordinarily defends the body against bacteria, viruses and disease. “It is needless if the disease can be controlled with mild medicines that don’t carry those kind of risks,” he said. Freedman said the transplants they had been doing in Ontario were suitable for perhaps 5-10% of MS patients. Modern drugs can control the symptoms for most people with the disease, but they do not work in people who have a sudden onset of very aggressive disease with frequent relapses. The doctors say this treatment is not for everyone with MS because of the dangers. Still I would consider it a breakthrough therapy, and the clinical group and the patients should be congratulated for this success.” It offers the hope of having a long-lasting treatment which may halt disease progression – though, again, this is a very invasive therapy and not without risks. “For a life-long progressive disease like MS with few treatment options this is really exciting data. And of course this trial will need replication by other groups too. ![]() Stephen Minger, a stem cell biologist and independent consultant, said: “The clinical results are truly impressive, in some cases close to being curative, though we need longer-term follow-up to know for certain whether the patients continue to do well or if there is a chance of relapse. However, the long-term results of the trial in Canada, published in the Lancet medical journal, have been universally applauded by scientists and support groups and will lead to a worldwide clamour for the transplants to be more widely available. Some patients did recover substantial function and it allowed them to do things they couldn’t do for years, but others did not.” As far as we can ascertain no new damage seems to occur beyond the treatment and patients don’t need to take any medication, so in that sense I think it has induced a long-standing remission. A cure would be stopping all disease moving forward and repairing all damage that has occurred. ![]() Mark Freedman, a neurologist at the University of Ottawa, who co-led the trial, said he would not say his patients were cured.
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