The curse of drug-resistant TB could be tackled using patients’ own cells, doctors reveal today.
Swedish doctors have developed a treatment using stem cells from the bone marrow.
The mesenchymal stromal cells were already known to travel to the lungs during illness and seek to repair the organ.
So far the treatment has been successfully tested in combination with antibiotics, The Lancet reports today.
In a preliminary safety study, some 30 patients with TB resistant to multiple drugs were given antibiotics together with an infusion of around ten million of their own cells.
After 18 months some 16 of these patients were found to be free of TB compared with just five out of another 30 patients not given the stem cell treatment.
Side-effects of the treatment included increased cholesterol levels and nausea.
Researcher Professor Markus Maeurer, from Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, said: "Conventional treatment for multi drug resistant TB uses a combination of TB drugs which are harmful to patients.
"Our new approach, using the patients’ own bone-marrow stromal cells is safe and could help overcome the body’s excessive inflammatory response, repair and regenerate inflammation-induced damage to lung tissue, and lead to improved cure rates."
Fellow researcher Professor Alimuddin Zumla, from University College London, UK, said the research was "novel and exciting" and showed the problem of drug-resistant illness was "not insurmountable."
He said: "They bring a unique opportunity with a fresh solution to treat hundreds of thousands of people who die unnecessarily of drug-resistant TB."
Writing in the journal Professor Robert Wilkinson from Imperial College London, UK, warns of a "long history" of seeking to use immune system therapy against TB.
He says: "Nevertheless, the potential to investigate an increasing range of more specific biological therapies or the repurposing of existing anti-inflammatory agents continues to attract interest.
"Whether relatively complex and expensive MSC therapy will join this list remains to be determined."
The Lancet 9 January 2014 [abstract]
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