This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Community: Knowledge & Support

There was a TV prog. on the National Geographic Channel last night in the UK about Stem Cell or REGENERATIVE THERAPY.
Here's a brief and slightly dis-jointed account of a review which I'm in the middle of preparing of that prog.

"After sitting through this programme I have to admit that I can see POTENTIAL here!

They are calling it REGENERATIVE THERAPY and for starters, I see no ethical issues here whatsoever as they do not use aborted foetuses that .
We're told-and I believe the experts for once - that it's a matter of the body healing itself naturally rather than having drugs pumped into it.

They showed several patients with a variety of conditions. We saw an Enlish lady with a severed spinal cord,who had stem cells taken from her nose and placed into the gap in her spinal cord and who is making good progress.

We saw another spiral injury from the States who was showing a remarkable improvememt, albeit slowly; another very young lady - a quadraplegic, due to breaking her neck, who had started to use her arms, hands and feet again in physio.; we saw heart injury patients who had stem cells injected into their damaged heart muscle and we saw a young baby with Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma being treated with umbilical cells from his newly born baby brother. It seems the younger the person then the quicker the healing process-as with everything I guess.

I'm inclined to think that there is definitely hope for MS patients with this Regenerative Therapy after seeing what it can do in other conditions.

The disappointment lies in the fact that the British lady had to go to Portugal for this-as did the U.S. lady and they were chosen because they lived within easy reach of intense Re-hab facilities.

Progress for the spinal injuries is indeed very slow which is why patients need to be near re-hab units for intense physio.

What I found interesting was looking at the transplanted stem cells under the microscope and seeing the brand new healthy tissue being re-generated.

I'm not one to jump up and down excitedly over anything new-I've seen too many disappointments regarding treatments in the past but I urge anyone to try to watch this-it's bound to be repeated-check your TV listings.

I would like to see this program also! If anyone knows of a time it's going to be on again,post it.