Ask you doctor to analyze this and dertermine when stem cells might become useful for you.
http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fncel.2014.00357/full?
Thorsten R. Doeppner* and
Dirk M. Hermann
- Department of Neurology, University of Duisburg-Essen Medical School, Essen, Germany
Ischemic stroke remains a heavy burden for industrialized countries.
The only causal therapy is the recanalization of occluded vessels via
thrombolysis, which due to a narrow time window still can be offered
only to a minority of patients. Since the majority of patients continues
to exhibit neurological deficits even following successful
thrombolysis, restorative therapies are urgently needed that promote
brain remodeling and repair once stroke injury has occurred. Due to
their unique properties of action, stem cell-based strategies gained
increasing interest during recent years. Using various stroke models in
both rodents and primates, the transplantation of stem cells, namely of
bone marrow derived mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) or neural progenitor
cells (NPCs), has been shown to promote neurological recovery most
likely via indirect bystander actions. In view of promising
observations, clinical proof-of-concept studies are currently under way,
in which effects of stem and precursor cells are evaluated in human
stroke patients. In this review we summarize already published studies,
which due to the broad experience in other medical contexts mostly
employed bone marrow-derived MSCs by means of intravenous
transplantation. With the overall number of clinical trials limited in
number, only a fraction of these studies used non-treated control
groups, and only single studies were adequately blinded. Despite these
limitations,
first promising results justify the need for more elaborate
clinical trials in order to make stem cell transplantation a success
for stroke treatment in the future.
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