The World's First Successful Stem Cell Treatment of Autoimmune Diseases!

crohnsandarthritis:

emilycharlotte-:

chroniccurve:

November 22, 2011:  Researchers in China, Japan, Germany, South Korea and the United States have started studying the effects of STEM CELL infusions in autoimmune patients. The good news? IT WORKED. The treatments were successful in Lupus/RA patients, MS patients and for patients whose hearing was lost due to autoimmune disease (their hearing RETURNED COMPLETELY) without any side effects. Though this is not a cure, it is a huge step towards better disease management and a better understanding of these diseases. Hopefully this treatment will become more accessible to the rest of us that don’t have $25,000 laying around.

“Other autoimmune diseases including multiple sclerosis, atopic dermatitis, and rheumatoid arthritis were not able to be treated with existing medication. However, these illnesses became manageable with stem cell treatment.” It has also been used for Crohn’s and various other AA diseases, even Fibromyalgia.

To read a detailed account of one man’s treatment experience with this new therapy, check out this article.

I’ve actually done a bit of research about this before, but the risk of death is so high, its just pointless. First you have to go through chemo and get to an almost neutropenic state, for the stem cell transplant to be done. Not only do you risk your life going though chemo - with the risk of infection killing you or many of the other horrific side effects doing so - you have to then have the transplant which potentially could not work. Why have a cocktail of of drugs that could prove fatal, when the disease you’re trying to ‘cure’ is not fatal to start with. Yes, going though a chronic illness is hard, and knowing that I will have it for the rest of my life is too, but I sure would not want to run the risk of dying and my family going through the heartache, just so I didn’t have to go though pain. Their pain would be a lot harder than the physical pain I am going through right now. I’d go as far as saying it is selfish. Yes, arthritis, lupus and all these things can be fatal, but only in extreme circumstances, where as the drugs that would be used for this, were created to cure diseases that actually WOULD be fatal. However, ruling out the possibility of death, then yes, I probably would go for the treatment at what ever cost :)

Hm, interesting! I think I’ve reblogged this before actually.

The trials I was looking at did not report any deaths among participants, but that could just be the one I was reading about.

Either way, the study I read was only for patients who did not respond to any other treatment. A last ditch effort, of sorts, and IBD can be potentially fatal (directly or indirectly, to the best of my knowledge).