I believe the article does mention that dogs were able to walk, and that it did improve things on them. I don't believe they are permanent reversals, UNLESS treatments are continued.
I am not a doctor....but I did stay at a Holiday Inn once.
By the way, I have a friend who I met our freshman year of highschool, almost 30 years ago. We studied martial arts together, I stood up in his wedding, and the last almost 20 years, I've watched him go from 5'11" 180lbs, to being in a wheel chair with arms no bigger than my wrists, and legs no bigger than my arms. All because of MD. So I hope that this treatment is promising.
I'm sorry about your friend. That's really sad, and must be hard to see. I know the young man I mentioned was fine when he was really small, and I guess he's about 17 now. It would be great if something could be done to improve their mobility and strength.
In one animal, the cells were released from a catheter into the aorta — the vessel leaving the heart that supplies the body with blood. This therefore allowed more widespread dissemination of the mesoangioblasts. The results of the stem-cell infusions were dramatic: this last animal displayed a marked improvement in its dystrophy and was walking well 5 months after the final injection; the other animals recovered to a lesser degree. In general, dogs receiving donor cells improved more than those receiving corrected autologous mesoangioblasts. Some muscles in the injected dogs had nearly normal levels of dystrophin, and even the muscles with only moderate levels of dystrophin showed significantly improved structure and function (Fig. 1).
At that LifeEthics posting I that I linked to earlier, there's the information that the first discovery on the benefit of (adult) stem cell therapy in Muscular Dystrophy came 1998when doctors discovered that a boy who had had a bone marrow stem cells transplant actually also had an unusually mild form of MD. It seems that his MD had been partially treated by the bone marrow transplant he'd received as a baby to cure his Severe Combined Immune Deficiency ("bubble boy" disease). Now, umbilical cord bone marrow transplants are done to treat the disease, but they have a huge risk compared to what we hope this (possibly autologous) specific stem cell infusion treatment would have.
(My grand daughter had an umbilical cord blood transplant in 2001, for a different kind of congenital immune dysfunction and bone marrow failure - her risk of rejection was very low when you add in the fact that she had no immune system to speak of to begin with and UCBlood has 1/4 the risk of graft vs. host that bone marrow stem cells carry. She is beautiful and healthy and 6 years old, now - we took her to the Spurs last night for the first time and she got to be on the jumbotron - of course, she, like her "G-dad" (granddad) was more interested in the Silver Dancers than I'd like.)
The search for "stem cells" plus Muscular Dystrophy on Google or Google News would have made the reporters much more informed on the history and benefits of non-embryonic stem cells in treating these diseases.