Stem cell transplants show promise for MS
Thu Jan 29, 2009 11:49pm GMT Email | Print | Share| Single Page[-]
Text [+] By Julie Steenhuysen
CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. researchers have reversed multiple sclerosis
symptoms in early stage patients by using bone marrow stem cell
transplants to reset the immune system, they said on Thursday.
Some 81 percent of patients in the early phase study showed signs of
improvement with the treatment, which used chemotherapy to destroy
the immune system, and injections of the patient's bone marrow cells
taken beforehand to rebuild it.
"We just start over with new cells from the stem cells," said Dr.
Richard Burt of Northwestern University in Chicago, whose study
appears in the journal Lancet Neurology.
Multiple sclerosis occurs when the immune system mistakenly attacks
the myelin sheath protecting nerve cells. It affects 2.5 million
people globally and can cause mild illness in some people and
permanent disability in others.
Symptoms may include numbness or weakness in the limbs, loss of
vision and an unsteady gait.
"MS usually occurs in adults," Burt said in a telephone interview.
Before they get the disease, their immune systems work well, he said,
but something happens to make the immune system attack itself.
His approach is aimed at turning back the clock to a time before the
immune system began attacking itself.
Burt said the approach -- called autologous non-myeloablative
haematopoietic stem-cell transplantation -- is a bit gentler than the
therapy used in cancer patients because rather than destroying the
entire bone marrow, it attacks just the immune system component of
the marrow, making it less toxic.
Burt and colleagues tried the treatment on 21 patients aged 20 to 53
with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis, an earlier stage in the
disease in which symptoms come and go.
Patients in the study were not helped by at least six months of
standard treatment with interferon beta.
After an average follow-up of about three years, 17 patients improved
by at least one measure on a disability scale, and the disease
stabilized in all patients.
Patients continued to improve for up to 24 months after the
transplant procedure, and then stabilized. Many had improvements in
walking, vision, incontinence and limb strength.
"To date, all therapies for MS have been designed and approved
because they slowed the rate of neurological decline. None of them
has ever reversed neurological dysfunction, which is what this has
done," Burt said.
Other teams have seen improvements in patients using a more
aggressive approach. In one study led by Dr. Mark Freedman of the
University of Ottawa last year, 17 MS patients treated with the more
aggressive approach were showing signs of remission two years after
treatment.
Burt stressed that the treatment approach needed to be tested in a
more scientifically rigorous randomized clinical trial, in which half
of the patients get the transplant treatment and the other half get
standard treatment.
That trial is under way.
(Editing by Maggie Fox and Peter Cooney)
http://uk.reuters.
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StemCells subscribers may also be interested in these sites:
Children's Neurobiological Solutions
http://www.CNSfoundation.org/
Cord Blood Registry
http://www.CordBlood.com/at.cgi?a=150123
The CNS Healing Group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CNS_Healing
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