8mm
Posted on 07/28/2007 11:47:33 AM PDT by wagglebee
A cardiologist and cardiothoracic surgeon is saying patients with various forms of heart damage are being effectively treated with their own stem cells. And a doctor from South America says many of his diabetic patients treated with adult stem cells no longer need to take insulin.
To date, there have been 1,800 heart disease patients in registered clinical trials around the world who have been treated with an injection of adult stem cells. One of the doctors who is performing such procedures is Dr. Amit Patel with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. At a recent forum in Washington, DC, he discussed the promise of adult stem-cell research.
Patel says the goal is to process bone marrow and put it into heart patients the same day so they are not waiting weeks or months for a transplant. "Our most difficult patient population [is] heart failure," he shares. "Five-million patients, and their only option is transplants -- and yet we only do 2,000 a year. So there is just a huge disparity."
The surgeon believes that if adult stem cells could be used to help those patients, "it would be huge because it gets rid of a lot of issues like immunosuppression, costs, and complications. But until we try it in our patients, we will never know how well it works," he added.
Dr. Patel says the aim is not to replace standard medical therapy, but rather to make it better and longer lasting in order to improve the patient's quality of life. According to Patel, it's "incremental steps instead of magical cures."
Adult stem-cell therapy benefiting diabetics
Adult stem cells are also being used by a Brazilian doctor who is treating autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis and systemic lupus. He uses stem cells harvested from his patients' own bone marrow, and is touting the benefits of such therapy.
Dr. Julio Voltarelli has also successfully treated patients with Krohn's disease and Type 1 diabetes through these adult stem-cell injections -- and the doctor has recently published a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association detailing his unprecedented treatment of juvenile diabetes.
Voltarelli says of the 15 Type 1 diabetes patients he provided with adult stem-cell transplants, 12 of them no longer need to take insulin. "We are continuing to study now, expanding the pool of patients treated because 15 is not a big number," he acknowledged. " We want to know if we treat 100 what would happen. And we [want to] move into other kinds of patients like a patient that has a diabetic coma, that's a more a severe kind of diabetes," said Voltarelli.
The Brazilian doctor says he also wants to extend his research to small children, not just teens and adults. Voltarelli made his comments at the press conference in Washington last week that featured doctors and patients who are touting the promise of adult stem-cell research.
Pro-Life Ping
Freepmail wagglebee or little jeremiah to subscribe or unsubscribe from the moral absolutes ping list.
FreeRepublic moral absolutes keyword search
bump
The likes of Michael J. Fox would have us believe that funding experimentation on dead babies will cure his Parkinsons.
The worst was when Ronnie Reagan tried to insinuate that his father would have supported killing babies to treat his Alzheimer's.
.
Nancy Reagan also supports embryonic stem cell research. I think it has a lot to do with Ronald’s alzheimer’s too. It’s a shame because I know that he would not have supported that.
AMEN!
PING!
Ping to read later.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.