Boy's Stem Cells Successfully Treat Cerebral Palsy, Awaken Him From Vegetative State

[babylonsister]

for stem cells!!!


Boy's Stem Cells Successfully Treat Cerebral Palsy, Awaken Him From Vegetative State
Four months after receiving stem-cell therapy, a boy who had been in a vegetative state from severe brain damage was almost able to function normally.
By Anthony Rivas | May 24, 2013 12:16 AM EDT


Doctors were able to successfully treat a 2.5-year-old boy who had suffered from cardiac arrest and brain damage, putting him in a vegetative state, using his own cord blood containing stem cells, a press release said.



At the end of 2008, the young boy, who was only identified as L.B., suffered cardiac arrest and subsequently became brain damaged and paralyzed in a vegetative state. The child was diagnosed with infantile cerebral palsy, a condition doctors at Catholic Hospital Bochum, part of the University Clinic of RUB in Germany, didn't know how to treat. However, the boy's parents didn't want to give up on him. They suggested using stem cells from cord blood that was frozen when he was born.

Doctors administered the blood nine weeks after the boy went into cardiac arrest and studied how his recovery progressed. Within two months, his spasticity decreased significantly. He was able to see, sit, smile, and speak simple words. Four months after they administered the blood, he was eating independently, walking with assistance and forming sentences of up to four words.

The results were very contradictory to what the doctors expected. According to the doctors, a child's chances of survival after such severe brain damage and enduring 25 minutes of resuscitation was believed to be six percent. They say that months after the brain damage, children normally show only small signs of consciousness.

"The prognosis for the little patient was threatening, if not hopeless," the medics said in the release.

However, his recovery proved otherwise and the medics were stunned.

more...

http://www.medicaldaily.com/articles/15870/20130524/boys-stem-cells-successfully-treat-cerebral-palsy.htm#

[FarPoint]

1. Sounds miraculous....

but...I'd like to see a series of such recoveries before I am amazed.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. How fascinating!

Thank you, my dear babylonsister!



What a miracle for that family...

[Frustratedlady]

3. Think of how much further the US could be if Bush hadn't banned

stem cell research. Other countries are miles ahead of us.

I hope these studies/implementations turn out to be true solutions and that the methods can be used on many different maladies in the future. I am truly amazed.

[longship]

4. One case isn't definitive.

It might not been the stem cells at all. Correlation is not causation. And one case is incapable of demonstrating causation.

This is encouraging, however, as causation may still be there. And there is plausibility. But more research will be needed, which because of this case, will undoubtedly be done.

The take away is that this may not pan out.

Hopefully, it will.

[DreamGypsy]

5. From the Case Report on this patient ...

...in the journal Case Reports in Transplantation:

5. Conclusions
Thus, given the severity of brain damage and persistent vegetative state he suffered from, the patient has recovered to an extent that is difficult to explain by intense active rehabilitation alone. Taking the evidence together, it appears that autologous transplantation of cord blood cells may in part have contributed to the remarkable functional neuroregeneration observed in this patient. If true, this would be the first account of a successful causative cell therapy of pediatric cerebral palsy, a condition for which there is no cure at present.

So, the peer-reviewed journal publication of the case is not quite so definitive about the overwhelming success and causal relationship of the stem cell treatment. Another typical case of popular press dramatizing what are undoubtedly important findings that warrant further trials with other patients.

The full journal paper "First Autologous Cell Therapy of Cerebral Palsy Caused by Hypoxic-Ischemic Brain Damage in a Child after Cardiac Arrest—Individual Treatment with Cord Blood" is available as pdf here.