Adult Stem Cells Successfully Reset Immune System for Multiple Sclerosis Patients

Unless babies are killed in the process of research, what is the point?

If this is approved one day, as a treatment, it will be great news for those with early disease who are diagnosed expeditiously.

Problem with MS is that in it’s relapsing remitting form, some folks aren’t diagnosed until they’ve had the disease for many years. It’s not unusual to find a middle aged person diagnosed with “lots” of lesions, and have the neurologist tell them they’ve had the disease for years.

Symptoms are diagnosed as other things early on (a pinched nerve leading to numbness, vertigo from a ear problem, etc), and since they let up after the exacerbation, it’s not until the disability starts to accumulate (which may be later in the disease) that the idea it’s actually a neurological problem surfaces and someone orders and MRI of the brain and spinal column.

Please stop this, you’re ruining the Dems’ baby murder fantasies. They need to justify their perversion with talk of “medical breakthroughs” and how abortions improve the economy.

Key word is “adult”. Not “embryonic”...

That would be me, at 48.

Problem with MS is that in it’s relapsing remitting form, some folks aren’t diagnosed until they’ve had the disease for many years. It’s not unusual to find a middle aged person diagnosed with “lots” of lesions, and have the neurologist tell them they’ve had the disease for years.

Symptoms are diagnosed as other things early on (a pinched nerve leading to numbness, vertigo from a ear problem, etc), and since they let up after the exacerbation, it’s not until the disability starts to accumulate (which may be later in the disease) that the idea it’s actually a neurological problem surfaces and someone orders and MRI of the brain and spinal columnMLS

Thanks for the information, I have a close friend who was diagnosed early on and it turned out to be an accurate diagnosis, fortunately. I didn’t know there were many cases as you describe.

And me at 46. Neuro says I’ve probably had it since college when I had a numb arm for about 2 weeks. But it got better, as did all the other weird stuff that happened through the years.

I saw a 2 year study of about 60 plus people in the test group where their disability scores improved making them less disabled. Brain lesions reduced on brain scans. The treatment involved a chemotherapy that has a 3% risk of death and a bone marrow transplant.

Symptoms are diagnosed as other things early on (a pinched nerve leading to numbness, vertigo from a ear problem, etc), and since they let up after the exacerbation, it’s not until the disability starts to accumulate (which may be later in the disease) that the idea it’s actually a neurological problem surfaces and someone orders and MRI of the brain and spinal column.

Yep, I have a friend with MS and that is exactly what happened to her. Years and years of symptoms diagnosed as something else and in the long term it was MS.

Multiple sclerosis symptoms 'can be reversed by stem cell treatment'

The symptoms of multiple sclerosis can be reversed with a new treatment using patients' own stem cells, a new study has shown. Patients reported greater ability to walk and more movement in their joints after a transplant of their own bone marrow cells. Their condition continued to improve for up to two years after the pioneering procedure, doctors found. Last year experts predicted that stem cell therapy could be used to "cure" the crippling neurological disease, which affects about 85,000 people in Britain, within 15 years. Sufferers experience fatigue, difficulty walking or speaking and pain. Caused by damage to myelin, a protective sheath around the body's central nervous system, there is no known cure for MS and few successful treatments.

Dr Richard Burt, of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, in Chicago, who led the latest study, described it as a "feasible procedure" that "not only seems to prevent neurological progression, but also appears to reverse neurological disability." Of the 21 patients injected with their own stem cells, 17 found that their symptoms improved while the treatment stabilised the progression of the disease in the others. Doctors currently use drugs to reduce the inflammation caused by the disease but none have been shown to reverse it effects.

Stem cells have become increasingly important in medical research for their ability to turn themselves into any kind of cell. The researchers used haemopoietic stem cells, which are found in bone marrow and give rise to all blood cells. Previous research had suggested that they had the ability to help the body to rebuild myelin damaged by MS. The findings, published in the Lancet Neurology medical journal, showed that 81 per cent of patients had significant improvements to their disability. Just five of the group suffered side effects of the treatment and all of these were easily treated with drugs, the researchers report.

The volunteers, aged between 20 and 53, were followed for a total of three years, and none of them saw their condition worsen in this time. Dr Burt said that further studies involving a larger number of patients were required to confirm his findings. Professor Gianluigi Mancardi, of the University of Genova, Italy, a specialist in MS, said: "The results imply this is a valuable alternative to the transplant conditioning therapies used so far." Dr Doug Brown, research manager at the MS Society, said: "These are very encouraging results and it's exciting to see that in this trial not only is progression of disability halted, but damage appears to be reversed.

"Stem cells are showing more and more potential in the treatment of MS and the challenge we now face is proving their effectiveness in trials involving large numbers of people." However, he added a note of caution that the trial had been carried out in conjunction with placing the patients on a drug, called alemtuzumab, which has been shown to halt the progression of the disease.

Scientists Reverse Early MS With Patients' Own Stem Cells

A small trial at a US hospital where patients with early stage MS had their own immune system stem cells transplanted back into their bodies appears to have reversed the neurological dysfunction of the early stages of the disease by causing their immune systems to "reset". The scientists said the results should now be confirmed with a larger, randomized trial.

The trial was the work of researchers from Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, plus colleagues from other research centres in and outside the US, and is published early online in The Lancet Neurology on 30 January; it will appear in the March print issue.
The patients on the small phase I/II trial experienced improvements in several areas affected by their MS, including walking, ataxia (loss of muscle coordination), limb strength, vision, and incontinence. They continued to improve for 24 months after receiving the transplants and then stabilized.

MS (Multiple Sclerosis) is an autoimmune disease where the person's own immune system attacks their central nervous system causing all kinds of neurological dysfunction such as loss of control over muscles and loss of ability to take in information through the senses. The early stage is called relapsing-remitting MS and the person has intermittent symptoms from which they partially or fully recover and then relapse into again. These include visual impairment, fatigue, sensory problems, limb weakness or paralysis, tremors, lack of coordination, problems with balance, changes in bowel and bladder, and psychological changes.

After about 10 to 15 years of relapsing-remitting MS, patients enter another stage called secondary progressive MS, where symptoms steadily become worse and irreversible. Lead researcher on the team, Dr Richard Burt, who works at using immunotherapy for autoimmune diseases at the Feinberg School said:

"This is the first time we have turned the tide on this disease."

For the trial, Burt and colleagues recruited 21 patients aged 20 to 53 who had had MS for an average of 5 years. They all had relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis that had been treated with interferon beta for at least 6 months but with no response. First, they had to destroy the patients' immune system with chemotherapy, then they injected them with their own stem cells that had been harvested before the chemo. This seeded a new immune system. The procedure is called "autologous non-myeloablative haematopoietic stem-cell transplantion". After an average follow-up of three years after receiving their transplants (which took place between January 2003 and February 2005), 17 patients (81 per cent) improved by at least one point on a disability scale. And for all patients, the disease had stopped progressing. Five patients relapsed in the early days, but then experienced remission after further immunosuppression.

Burt said that they focused on destroying only the immune system part of the bone marrow and then regenerating it, a procedure that is less toxic than traditional chemotherapy for cancer. But amazingly, when the new immune system is created, the patient's new white blood cells are self-tolerant, as Burt explained:

"In MS the immune system is attacking your brain." "After the procedure, it doesn't do that anymore," he said.

The authors concluded from the trial that this type of stem cell transplantation in patients with relapsing-remitting MS "reverses neurological deficits", and Burt said the results were "promising and exciting", but to get real proof, you need a randomized trial, which he has already launched. Burt has been working with MS patients for some time; in earlier research he tried transplanting immune system cells into patients with late-stage MS but it didn't help them like it did the early stage patients in this trial.

"Autologous non-myeloablative haemopoietic stem cell transplantation in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis: a phase I/II study."
Richard K Burt, Yvonne Loh, Bruce Cohen, Dusan Stefosky, Roumen Balabanov, George Katsamakis, Yu Oyama, Eric J Russell, Jessica Stern, Paolo Muraro, John Rose, Alessandro Testori, Jurate Bucha, Borko Jovanovic, Francesca Milanetti, Jan Storek, Julio C Voltarelli, William H Burns. The Lancet Neurology published online ahead of print 30 January 2009. doi:10.1016/S1474-4422(09)70017-1

Click here for Abstract.

Autologous non-myeloablative haemopoietic stem cell transplantation in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis: a phase I/II study

Background

Autologous non-myeloablative haemopoietic stem cell transplantation is a method to deliver intense immune suppression. We evaluated the safety and clinical outcome of autologous non-myeloablative haemopoietic stem cell transplantation in patients with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (MS) who had not responded to treatment with interferon beta.

Methods

Eligible patients had relapsing-remitting MS, attended Northwestern Memorial Hospital, and despite treatment with interferon beta had had two corticosteroid-treated relapses within the previous 12 months, or one relapse and gadolinium-enhancing lesions seen on MRI and separate from the relapse. Peripheral blood haemopoietic stem cells were mobilised with 2 g per m2 cyclophosphamide and 10 μg per kg per day filgrastim. The conditioning regimen for the haemopoietic stem cells was 200 mg per kg cyclophosphamide and either 20 mg alemtuzumab or 6 mg per kg rabbit antithymocyte globulin. Primary outcomes were progression-free survival and reversal of neurological disability at 3 years post-transplantation. We also sought to investigate the safety and tolerability of autologous non-myeloablative haemopoietic stem cell transplantation.

Findings

Between January, 2003, and February, 2005, 21 patients were treated. Engraftment of white blood cells and platelets was on median day 9 (range day 8—11) and patients were discharged from hospital on mean day 11 (range day 8—13). One patient had diarrhoea due to Clostridium difficile and two patients had dermatomal zoster. Two of the 17 patients receiving alemtuzumab developed late immune thrombocytopenic purpura that remitted with standard therapy. 17 of 21 patients (81%) improved by at least 1 point on the Kurtzke expanded disability status scale (EDSS), and five patients (24%) relapsed but achieved remission after further immunosuppression. After a mean of 37 months (range 24—48 months), all patients were free from progression (no deterioration in EDSS score), and 16 were free of relapses. Significant improvements were noted in neurological disability, as determined by EDSS score (p<0·0001), neurological rating scale score (p=0·0001), paced auditory serial addition test (p=0·014), 25-foot walk (p<0·0001), and quality of life, as measured with the short form-36 (SF-36) questionnaire (p<0·0001).

Interpretation

Non-myeloablative autologous haemopoietic stem cell transplantation in patients with relapsing-remitting MS reverses neurological deficits, but these results need to be confirmed in a randomised trial.

Funding

Division of Immunotherapy, Northwestern University.

Some good news.

Thanks, Coleus.

bump & a big time ping

Some good news.

Sounds like it.

Amazing << Hear this. Feel this, and tell me that this isn't music.
And dont sleep on these two, either.

Problem with MS is that in it’s relapsing remitting form, some folks aren’t diagnosed until they’ve had the disease for many years. It’s not unusual to find a middle aged person diagnosed with “lots” of lesions, and have the neurologist tell them they’ve had the disease for years.

That's exactly what happened to me.

Amazing << Hear this. Feel this, and tell me that this isn't music.
And dont sleep on these two, either.