A bone marrow treatment may successfully treat multiple sclerosis, it was announced today.
Researchers used stem cells extracted from patient’s own bone marrow for the treatment, which they say may reverse disability caused by brain damage.
The research, reported on-line today by The Lancet Neurology, involved just 21 patients studied for three years. The treatment will need trials involving larger numbers of patients and rigorous techniques before it can be widely adopted.
Treatments of multiple sclerosis are notoriously difficult to study because sometimes the disease may come and go, a process known as relapsing-remitting.
Doctors found that after three years 17 of the 21 patients had reduced disability – and none had deteriorated.
Researcher Dr Richard Burt, of the Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Chicago, USA, said: "This is the first time we have turned the tide on this disease."
The objective of the treatment was to create a new immune system – as it is immune reactions that is responsible for destroying brain cells and causing MS.
Patients had their immune systems destroyed with chemotherapy and were then injected with stem cells obtained from their own blood beforehand. The procedure is called autologous non-myeloablative haematopoietic stem-cell transplantion.
Dr Burt said: "In MS the immune system is attacking your brain. After the procedure, it doesn’t do that anymore."
Writing in the same journal Professor Gianluigi Mancardi, of San Martino Hospital, University of Genova, Italy, says: "The results imply that this is a valuable alternative to the transplant conditioning therapies used so far."
The Lancet Neurology On-line 30 January 2009 doi:10.1016/S1474-4422(09)70017-1
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