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Wednesday May 25, 2005
Adult Stem Cell Treatment Show Improvement in Liver Disease in Early Results
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LONDON, May 25, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Adult stem cells have been described as the human body's repair shop and researchers are making abundant progress in harnessing and directing this natural tissue repair system. Now a team of scientists at London's Hammersmith Hospital has extended the use of adult stem cells, those derived from the patient's own body and not from an embryo, to treating cirrhosis of the liver at the same time that a Japanese team is investigating their use for liver fibrosis.
Liver disease is on the rise in the western world. In the UK it can be tracked, ironically, to improved standards of living and to increasing rates of hepatitis, a sexually transmitted disease that affects the liver.
Until the advent of stem cell treatment, advanced liver disease was largely untreatable except for dangerous and often unsuccessful organ transplants. The London team has treated five patients with stem cells derived from their own bone marrow. The cells were cultured and re-inserted into the hepatic artery in the liver under local anaesthetic, where they seem to be doing the work of rebuilding.
One of the patients undergoing the trial said, "I didn't want to have a transplant and spend the rest of my life on anti-rejection drugs, so I thought I would grasp at a straw."
Though this initial trial was intended only to test the safety of the treatment, the doctor in charge is encouraged by early results. Even though only a very small number of cells were used, Professor Nagy Habib, head of liver surgery at Hammersmith said, "The icing on the cake was that some of the blood results were already improved."
The second phase of the trial is scheduled to begin this summer.
Read BBC coverage:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4573453.stm
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