Great News

 

Adult Stem Cell Success Against Myasthenia Gravis

By Wesley J. Smith
Editor’s note. This appeared on Wesley’s great blog.
“Lymphocytes” are white blood cells that provide long-lasting immunity. “Autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplant” means they were stem cells taken from the patient’s own blood-forming stem cells.
And another very hopeful adult stem cell regenerative medicine success. Myasthenia gravis is a serious neuromuscular disease that causes progressive disability.
In an early human study, success in beating it into remission.
From the MedPage Today story:

In patients with persistent severe myasthenia gravis (MG), replacing their old lymphocytes with new ones generated by their own stem cells achieved long-term remission without further treatment, a retrospective cohort study showed.

All seven patients in the study achieved complete, durable, stable remission — some for more than a decade — after autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT), Harold Atkins, MD, of the University of Ottawa in Ontario, and colleagues reported in JAMA Neurology.

Patients had no further MG symptoms and did not require ongoing therapy over a period of 2.5 years to almost 13 years following high-dose chemotherapy, antithymocyte globulin, and CD34-selected HSCT, they reported.

[Ed. Note. In other words, the patients’ faulty immune system was removed by chemotherapy and specific antibody treatment, and replaced using selected adult stem cells from the patient’s bone marrow.]
This is an onerous therapy, not undertaken lightly. But what a great achievement!
And look ma, no embryonic stem cells in sight.

Source: NRLC News