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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThis isn’t hype: Canadian doctors just reversed severe MS using stem cells
by Julia Belluz and Javier Zarracina on June 9, 2016
Jennifer Molson was 21, juggling a day job and night school to pursue her dream of becoming a cop, when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She woke up one morning with pins and needles in her hand, and within a week she couldn't move her left arm.
By 2001, five years later, she was living in the Ottawa Hospital under 24-hour care, getting around using a cane, walker, or wheelchair. When she was discharged on weekends, to spend time with her then-boyfriend Aaron, she had to rely on him for her every need. He'd cut her food into bite-size pieces, and bathe and dress her. When she lost control of her bladder or bowel, he'd help her go to the bathroom.
"I had no feeling from the chest down," Molson says. "I could touch something boiling on the stove and burn myself. I could touch fabric without knowing whether it's sandpaper." For patients like Molson, with a severe form of MS and no response to the available medications, theres little hope.
Two years later, her life had taken an abrupt turn. "I walked down the aisle and danced at my wedding, something I had always dreamed of doing," she said of her marriage to Aaron in 2003.
http://www.vox.com/2016/6/9/11898512/multiple-sclerosis-stem-cell-chemo
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Not the solution for everyone, but a step in the right direction. Also, they reversed it 13 years ago, not "just" but only reported it recently.
Ilsa
(61,697 posts)Could this be because we backsliding when Dumbya proclaimed no new stem cell lines back in 2001?
Ms. Toad
(34,086 posts)These stem cells are harvested from the patient (not from embryos), purified, and returned after the immune system is killed off.
Ilsa
(61,697 posts)marybourg
(12,634 posts)a quarter century ago in Germany for lupus patients. American doctors reviled and mocked the German hospital that was allowing the doctor to use this treatment and managed to get him shut down.
1monster
(11,012 posts)When I see this, I can only wonder how many more people might have been able to live normal lives had the Congressional Republicans and the Bush Administration not done every thing they could to stymie stem cell research.
applegrove
(118,767 posts)from the patient's own bone marrow, then purified.
uponit7771
(90,359 posts)... know that there's hope.
The headache are horrible