To China for brain injury treatment

Heartening to read about a young U.S. man who after a five-week stay in China can nowdrink unassisted, control his drooling, open and close his eyes and hear better - and it is early days yet.
As well as the stem cell therapy the young man received intensive physiotherapy, acupuncture, massage and speech therapy.
For the price tag (much of which was met by local support and fundraising) his parents are delighted with the early changes they can see every day.
As his mother says: "In the rehab world these are huge things".
This story is just another example of how people are being helped to a healthier and better quality of life right now - thanks to adult stem cells.

The hype makes one gasp and stretch one's eyes!

Every day of every week someone, somewhere announces yet another breakthrough. Proponents of embryonic stem cells hold their breath waiting for the cure for Alzheimer's Disease and Parkinsonism. Okay, it's only nine years since embryonic stem cells have been kept alive long enough to study. However, they get all the funding and have produced not one human trial or cure. All they have done to date is produce tumors in rodents. Great hype - lousy results.
By contrast, there are hundreds of trials under way in various countries treating patients with over 70 diseases using adult stem cells. Here the hype at least bears some relationship with humans who are, or were, suffering what medicine has not so far been able to cure.Hundreds of people are playing golf, walking, running, scuba diving etc etc - or simply being able to bend and lift to hug a grandchild. These people ought to be dead, but instead have a new lease on life after a safe and non-invasive (or minimally invasive) procedure whereby their own adult stem cells were harvested and injected into their failing heart. Others have found new mobility and far less pain from relief of claudication associated with peripheral artery disease. The list goes on,and on. How much research money do these researchers and developers get compared with the embryonic lobby?
Please let us listen to the patients who have dramatically improved. If they sound like crusaders I guess it's because they feel so much better, more energetic and more mobile.Their hype is based on measurable improvements NOW and not at some fanciful future time. They have guts to try something still experimental but the results speak for themselves. Good on them!

SPINAL INJURIES and stem cell therapy

There is exciting work being done in India with the paralysed - and none of it using embryonic stem cells.
One patient spent the last year bedridden and now walks with crutches. She is looking forward to further improvement from a top-up dose of adult stem cells. It would appear that stem cells injected into the spinal cord attach themselves to damaged nerves and grow into new nerves.
The institute has now treated over 100 patients using cells derived from body fat and the results give new hope to paraplegics.

Adult stem cells creating facial soft tissue

Columbia University are using mesenchymal stem cells derived from patients' own bone marrow or adipose (fat) tissue then implanting them over a scaffold where they go to workcreating bone,fat,cartilage and other types of cells.
Imagine what this could (and will) mean for victims of accident or war and all those who have had disfiguring sugery for cancer. Grafts shrink and lose their shape and volume. In animal studies to date these implants do not - and, of course, there is no risk of rejection. Apart from that grafts taken from a patient's body create additional wounds.
This is amazing stuff and will bring realistic hope to all those who have disfiguring scars because these cells replicate themselves and differentiate into what the area needs.
Another example of how science is being driven forwards so rapidly in this exciting area of regenerative medicine. There's nothing alternative about it - this is mainstream medicine with vast potential. Adult stem cell research results are being released virtually daily. We are truly living in exciting times that will bring new hope to the hopeless and new lives to those suffering from a vast range of previously considered untreatable or hopeless conditions. Diseases like Freidreich's Ataxia can be helped right now. Heart failure patients and those who can only walk with great pain from periperal artery disease (PAD) can be helped right now. The list goes on and on. It's my privilege to make therapies using adult stem cells known so that patients can join the thousands already leading new lives because of adult stem cells.

Cuba now into stem cell transplants

A hospital in Cuba has treated a fully paraplegic patient with stem cells. Three months later he is walking with assistance.
This story adds to others coming out of China and India where stem cell therapies are being used on CNS diseases with success.
Paraplegia means a wheelchair existence for many thousands of people. While it is still early days in applying innovative adult stem cell therapies, the results are most encouraging. One doctor unwisely suggested that we do not know how long any return of feeling or even mobility will last. If I was a paraplegic I would take a month or a year. What will the doubting Thomases say when these patients maintain their benefits? Imagine the savings on healthcare that could accrue from being able to give these people back what they had lost. It is an interesting coment that countries other than the so-called technologically advanced first world nations are leading the field. Most of us need to examine our prejudices about countries like Thailand, India, China and now Cuba - their facilities and skills more than match those found in the west. I will gladly put you in touch with patients treated in Thailand for heart failure, cardiomyopathy and ishemic heart disease who will tell you the truth.

The miracle of sight restored

A six year old girl in India received stem cell therapy on an eye blinded by wet lime. A small piece of the border of the cornea from her healthy eye was cultured on an amniotic membrane - a low-tech, innovative approach - and 11 days later was put into her blinded eye. When the patch was removed the girl could once again see!!!
The hospital involved has now performed close to 450 adult limbal stem cell transplants with a success rate of about 72 percent.
Clinical trials continue, along with more trials for heart attacks or myocardial infarction at another Indian hospital. And still the sceptics say that such procedures in non-western countries should be treated with distain as unproven. Who cares? If the girl can see and if heart failure patients can get a longer, pain-free and more active life the most of us would take the chance. After all the odds are heavily in the patient's favor.