Paraplegic breakthrough using adult stem cells

Apparent major breakthrough with patient paralyzed 19 years Posted: September 28, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern

In an apparent major breakthrough, scientists in Korea report using umbilical cord blood stem cells to restore feeling and mobility to a spinal-cord injury patient.

The research, published in the peer-reviewed journal Cythotherapy, centered on a woman who had been a paraplegic 19 years due to an accident.

After an infusion of umbilical cord blood stem cells, stunning results were recorded:

"The patient could move her hips and feel her hip skin on day 15 after transplantation. On day 25 after transplantation her feet responded to stimulation."

Umbilical cord cells are considered "adult stem cells," in contrast to embryonic stem cells, which have raised ethical concerns because a human embryo must be destroyed in order to harvest them.

The report said motor activity was noticed on day 7, and the woman was able to maintain an upright position on day 13. Fifteen days after surgery, she began to elevate both lower legs about one centimeter.

The study's abstract says not only did the patient regain feeling, but 41 days after stem cell transplantation, testing "also showed regeneration of the spinal cord at the injured cite" and below it.

The scientists conclude the transplantation "could be a good treatment method" for paraplegic patients.

Bioethics specialist Wesley J. Smith, writing in Lifesite.com, expressed enthusiasm about the apparent breakthrough, but also urged caution.

"We have to be cautious," said Smith, a senior fellow at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute and a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture. "One patient does not a treatment make."

The authors of the study note, writes Smith, that the lamenectomy the patient received might have offered some benefit.

"But still, this is a wonderful story that offers tremendous hope for paralyzed patients," he said.

The fact that the patient has a very old injury, Smith added, makes the results even more dramatic.

Smith said he has known about the study for some time, "but because I didn't want to be guilty of the same hyping that is so often engaged in by some therapeutic cloning proponents, I waited until it was published in a peer reviewed journal."

Like most breakthroughs using adult stem cells, this one has been completely ignored by the U.S. mainstream media, Smith pointed out.

My daughter has brain damage, and I keep on wondering if they'll find a way to reverse the damamge.

That said, my daughter has turned out remarkedly well, and if we could fix the damage I don't know if we would encourage it. She's only 9, and she is such a hard worker. She can do almost everything (except speak clearly) these days. Of course, everything is more difficult for her, and she still has lots of meltdowns.

Anyway, it's nice to see progress in these areas. It gives a lot of people hope!

Drs. Cox and Baumgartner in Houston have been doing a study on using children's own bone marrow in trauma cases. They're focusing on new damage and severely limited in funds. But, there is hope.
http://www.uthouston.edu/Media/newsreleases/nr2005/stemcell-child.html
http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct/show/NCT00254722?order=1

Every day, we learn more about the stimulation and recruiting of stem cells from the patient's own body and from donor cells, like cord blood.

Donations of cord blood, fat, peripheral blood, bone marrow are found much more easily and in larger numbers in practical terms, because there are more people than embryos that will ever be available for destruction, more babies being born than embryos in any lab or freezer, and because no one has to die for them.

Cord blood "unrestricted somatic stem cells" appear to me to be the most promising of all the stem cells.

Here's a fantastic review article
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=1796850

The answers are obvious if you think about it -- even the "embryonic proponents" are trying to make *adult stem cells.*

None of the treatments involved in therapy - or likely to be in the future - are embryonic stem cells, because the cells we need only function in specific conditions and surroundings. The specific conditions and surroundings are only found in place, in the actual site of damage.

Embryonic stem cells function to make embryonic tissues and must develop into precursors and then specific tissues.

If you read the research articles, even those embryonic cells from the inner mass are not all universal cells. They have had some genes turned on and some genes turned off. The researchers select out the cells they desire by creating conditions that favor only those cells.

The trick in *both* embryonic and adult stem cell research is to find and support only the cells that are desired. And, again, the conditions that support the cells desired are only reliably found in the body, in site, and are best for non-embryonic stem cells and precursors.

On the other hand, "adult" or non-embryonic stem cells are found all over the body. Like the embryonic stem cells that come from the destruction of embryonic humans, there are many kinds. We are discovering which organs and tissues have their own stem cells in relatively large amounts, and which do not. Researchers have found precursors or other cells in bone marrow, fat, and cord cells and cord blood that can be induced to turn into the necessary cells, in numbers large enough for treatment.

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