posted
I am so confused when I was asked by our llmd to search for the topic since my wife has not improved with the "traditional" abx + detox treatment. I have searched "stem cell" on this site but find nothing. Can someone point me to the right information?
In my mind, I can't seem to understand the connection between infections and stem cells. What are we talking about?
Posts: 822 | From midwest | Registered: Apr 2009
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posted
Some people with lyme have gotten/are getting stem cell transplants, in various foreign countries. It is expensive. I heard that some are returning for multiple treatments, two or three. That kinda discouraged me. Don't think it cures lyme, maybe it repairs damage.
And some docs think lyme might infect stem cells, so if it did, then this would be a very expensive short term thing.
The lyme times had an article by someone who did this and seems to have been the star patient. Try looking at the website for last two years, maybe you can find the article. Take it with a grain of salt.
Unfortunately there is no publicly available central database or published articles on the outcomes of these treatments for lyme. Still very new, and likely to be a while before there is any sort of reliable track record we can have to help in deciding whether to do it. Plus, the U.S. has held back stem cell research, so some foreign countries are ahead of us. I personally feel it is still in the pioneer stage, and people who do it are not assured of the outcome.... it is an act of faith by desperate people. Maybe it will help, maybe it won't.
Posts: 8430 | From Not available | Registered: Oct 2000
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Here is a recent article in Biotechnology journal about some stem cell clinical trials. As you can see, these are very focused on specific ailments. There was recently an ALS patient who received a stem cell transplant in a southern state, no reports yet on outcome.
Persistence has paid off for UK biotech ReNeuron. After five years of repeated regulatory rebuffs, in December the Guildford, UK�based company began treating patients with ReN001, a genetically engineered neural stem cell line. This is the first time genetically engineered neural stem cells will be evaluated in people with disabling ischemic stroke, and the first stem-cell trial has got the go-ahead from the UK's Gene Therapy Advisory Committee (GTAC; Nat. Biotechnol. 28, 303, 2010).
Also in the same month, StemCells of Palo Alto, California, received approval from Swiss regulatory agency Swissmedic for a phase 1 clinical trial with human neural stem cells, also in stroke.
Two other companies, Geron of Menlo Park, California, and Neuralstem of Rockville, Maryland, moved into the clinic last year to tackle brain disorders and spinal paralysis using a human embryonic stem cell (hESC)-derived oligodendrocyte precursor cell therapy and a human neural stem cell line, respectively (Table 1). Table 1: Selected stem cell therapies entering the clinic Full table
StemCells' product candidate (HuCNS-SC) is a purified population of human neural stem cells, derived from human fetal (16�20 weeks) brain tissue, sorted using the CD133 marker and expanded in culture. The company has already completed a phase 1 clinical trial in the US in the rare and fatal neurodegenerative disease infantile neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis, or Batten's disease. Early this year, StemCells plans another phase 1 trial in which this same cell line will be implanted into patients with chronic spinal cord injury and paralysis.
Posts: 8430 | From Not available | Registered: Oct 2000
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posted
lou - if I understand correctly, what you are saying is that stem cell therapy is not a cure, or even a treatment, to Lyme disaease, but it is a way to repair what has been damaged, right?
I did get a chance to discuss this some further with the llmd, and was told that there are some options to look into, and some are very expensive, with a prolonged stay in a foreign countries, and others are less so and quicker.
This is a very hard decision to make, I sense.
Posts: 822 | From midwest | Registered: Apr 2009
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posted
Well, that is my conclusion, that it repairs, not treats the lyme. But, as I said, there really is not a track record to consult, just individual patient's experiences.
I will try to find my issue of the Lyme Times that had the article by a lyme patient who actually did this. Looks like it will not be available yet in the Lyme Times archive.
The more expensive and longer treatment is based on embryonic stem cells, the less expensive and shorter treatment is based on adult stem cells.
Will send you a pm too. I don't think the locations of these treatments should be discussed on a public forum, because some years ago when the hypothermia treatment was the latest hope, it was widely discussed on lymenet, and subsequently the clinic in Italy was shut down. This was probably done by someone with an official govt position who complained to the right people, almost certainly after reading about it on lymenet. So, although that therapy probably had some merit, it will no longer be tried because it was inadequately supervised in one case and the patient died.
I feel that people who go for treatments in foreign countries that they can't get in the U.S. need to realize there are risks and it may be hard to get accurate information about them.
Posts: 8430 | From Not available | Registered: Oct 2000
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