Posted on 12/17/2004 2:55:15 AM PST by MikefromOhio
Surgeons have used stem cells from fat to help repair skull damage in a 7-year-old girl in Germany, in what's apparently the first time such fat-derived cells have been exploited to grow bone in a human.
The girl had been injured two years before in a fall, which destroyed several areas of her skull totaling nearly 19 square inches, the German researchers reported.
Other surgeons had failed to correct the defects, and the girl wore a protective helmet. Her brain could sometimes be seen pulsating through the missing areas of her skull.
But several weeks after the stem-cell surgery, she was able to leave her helmet behind, the researchers report in the December issue of the Journal of Cranio-Maxillofacial Surgery. The skull is now smooth to the touch, the missing parts replaced by thin but solid bone, said Dr. Hans-Peter Howaldt of the Justus-Liebig-University Medical School in Giessen, Germany. The child was not identified.
Howaldt, who performed the surgery last year, said the damage was too extensive to be repaired with bone grafts from her body. He said the hope was that if bits of the child's bone were mixed with stem cells, the cells would turn into bone-building cells that would create additional bone.
That appears to have happened, Howaldt said in a telephone interview Thursday.
"I cannot prove that our success comes from the stem cells alone," he said, "but the combination of the two things simply worked."
In August, other German doctors reported growing a jaw bone in a man's back muscle and transplanting it to his mouth to fill a gap left by cancer surgery. The researchers used bone marrow, which also contains stem cells, to help grow the bone. But it's not clear whether the stem cells were responsible for the bone growth.
(Excerpt) Read more at story.news.yahoo.com ...
I think that as this stem cell issue gets more study, we will find that the stem cells from many parts of adult humans will do the trick, not just unborn baby stem cells.
Wouldn't it be ironic if body fat, a substance as common as idiocy at a MoveOn convention, turns out to be the very thing that saves us all?
well then in that case this fatbutt country of ours will save the World!! :)
yeah that would be very very ironic
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You dirty rat. By one second ! :)
asgard got ya man....
not only him, but algore now too :)
Exactly what type of stem cells are these?
they are stem cells from fat....which every living human being has. and they generally have to many of them....
But you're right - that source alone should render down to provide enough stem cells to cure every ailment down through ho-hum mouth in the US for the next 25 years.
You just watch: the lack of distinction of these cells as not from embryos will lead this report to be used to boost embryonic cell research.
Sorry I don't think so..... yuck!!!!!!!!!!
I would bet on that in the near term. But as I stated, I think as the entire subject gets more study, the differences will cancel out, and any stem cell will be able to do what any other stem cell can do.
At least that is my guess right now. As medical science improves, the boundaries will greatly decrease...
This kid went from having a big bulging brain to a fathead in a few weeks
This article fails to mention the richest, most available source of stem cells, umbilical cords, which have been generally tossed out after the baby is born. Just think what we could do with THAT if skull bone was grown with ordinary fat stem cells? Wow. I just wish more people would educate themselves about the benefits of saving umbilical cords for future use.
In short, there is NO scientific reason to use embryos to obtain stem cells. It is a great tragedy that again, the left will "sell" embryonic stem cells as the only legitimate stem cells, when it is so patently not true.
the left is taking a horrible gamble in risking the lives of our unborn by experimenting on them. It is wrong on all counts, especially as other types of stem cells are showing the same remarkable qualities as embryonic stem cells are....
Good find. I understand that a University in Toronto, IIRC, has made significant progress in the use of adult stem cells. They are rejected by the patient at a much lower rate then fetal cells.
the issue needs to be studied further.
Never know what we may find....
And if you use your own stem cells, the risk of rejection is almost nil. That's why I keep harping on using other than embryonic stem cells.
It's similar to a situation I had a few years ago. I had surgery scheduled and one of the options explained to me was to donate my own blood beforehand to give back to myself during the procedure, called autologous transfer. I did it and bounced back almost immediately, the best results of a surgery ever, for me.
Wouldn't it be cool if we could grow our own organs for transplant?
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Maybe now we can cure Michael Moore.