I hope this is as big a deal as it seems. Adult neural stem cells taken from cadaver fetuses—remember adult stem cells is a popular term—have dramatically reduced the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, according to a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. From the story, as conveyed by New Scientist.com:
A single injection of neural stem cells has markedly improved the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease in monkeys, paving the way for stem-cell therapies in humans with the condition. Richard Sidman at the Harvard Institutes of Medicine in Boston, US, and colleagues recreated the symptoms of Parkinson’s in African green monkeys by injecting them with a chemical that damages neurons that make dopamine—a neurotransmitter vital for controlling movement. They then injected the monkeys’ brains with neural stem cells taken from human fetuses that had been miscarried at 13 weeks. A month later, the monkeys showed marked recoveries. “They could stand, walk, feed themselves, and had regained independent living,” says Sidman.The benefits were not permanent.
After around four months, the animals again began to deteriorate, probably because the stem cells were being attacked by the monkeys’ immune systems. However, they were still much healthier than untreated monkeys.What is interesting is that this same experiment has been performed in one human using his own tissues—with strikingly similar results.
Dr. Michael Levesque removed about a pea-sized section of Turner’s brain. He isolated neural stem cells, proliferated them in culture, and then returned Turner’s cells back into his brain. Despite only being treated in one lobe, Turner testified in Congress (and told me) that he enjoyed years of almost complete remission. His Parkinson’s symptoms have now returned and he yearns for another treatment.Bottom line: It continues to appear that adult stem cell research will offer tremendous human benefit. This technique still has to be tried much more fully in human trials, and I hope they use the Levesque technique to avoid tissue rejection and the concern some will have over using fetal tissues if it comes from aborted fetuses. But despite the ongoing assertions of the famous, embryonic stem cell research does clearly not appear to offer the “best hope” for patients with Parkinson’s disease. Time for politicians and the media to get a clue.
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