<\/p>\n
The exciting new study was published this month, and was conducted on 110 patients with relapsing-remitting MS over an 11 year period. It compared two groups: one given standard disease-modifying therapy (DMT), the other given a hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) alongside chemotherapy.<\/p>\n
After evaluations at 1 year and 5 year points, researchers found that 34 patients in the DMT group demonstrated diseases progression, compared to only 3 in the HSCT group. In the first year, mean EDSS score (expanded disability status scale) also improved in the HSCT group, whereas it worsened in the DMT group.<\/p>\n
One participant in the study, 28 year old Amanda Loy, participated in the trial and was given the stem cell transplant:<\/p>\n
It sounds so dramatic, but [the treatment] gave me my life back\u2026I didn\u2019t really expect all of these improvements. I went into it thinking, \u2018If I at least don\u2019t get worse from this point, that\u2019ll be okay.\u2019 So all the improvements have been totally unexpected but a nice surprise, that\u2019s for sure.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Before the transplant, Amanda was severely affected by her multiple sclerosis. She couldn\u2019t work full time, had bladder problems and needed to rely on a cane to walk. However just one year after the transplant using stem cells from her own blood, she noticed astonishing improvements. She no-longer suffered from bladder symptoms, fatigue, numbness in her limbs, heat intolerance or nerve pain.<\/p>\n
11 years on, Amanda\u2019s MS has progressed so much that she is back to working as a full time teacher in the US. She\u2019s even able to play sports and has no need for MS medication.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the best evidence comparing stem cell transplants to standard therapy\u2026This is one of the first pieces of proof that, yes, patients who have aggressive MS do better after a transplant than with the standard therapy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Harry Atkins, stem cell transplant physician, Ottawa Hospital<\/cite><\/p>\n
There is no doubt; the results of this preliminary clinical trial are impressive. However the study holds its limitations, as it\u2019s only proven beneficial for patients with less-conventional relapsing-remitting MS. Further research and clinical trials will be needed to open the possibility for more widely available stem cell transplants for treating multiple sclerosis.<\/p>\n
References:
\njamanetwork.com\/<\/a>
\nwww.vox.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A small clinical trial has shown that when multiple sclerosis patients received a stem cell transplant alongside their chemotherapy, the majority demonstrated improvements in their quality of life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[220],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-clinical-updates"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/futurehealthbiobank.com\/gr-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/futurehealthbiobank.com\/gr-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/futurehealthbiobank.com\/gr-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futurehealthbiobank.com\/gr-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futurehealthbiobank.com\/gr-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/futurehealthbiobank.com\/gr-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9543\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/futurehealthbiobank.com\/gr-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futurehealthbiobank.com\/gr-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futurehealthbiobank.com\/gr-en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}