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New Study Shows Dangers of Stem Cell Treatment

dannybex

Senior Member
Messages
3,561
Location
Seattle
Jen...

...there's a post over on CFSFMExperimental (#129258) where a patient of Cheney's talks about improving on stem cells, but then relapsed, which he says Cheney attributed to stress...

d.
 
A

Aftermath

Guest
Stem Cell Therapy

Undergoing stem cell therapy for an illness with a completely unknown etiology is beyond reckless at this current time.

As awful as I feel, I wouldn't go near this right now.
 

Sushi

Moderation Resource Albuquerque
Messages
19,935
Location
Albuquerque
...there's a post over on CFSFMExperimental (#129258) where a patient of Cheney's talks about improving on stem cells, but then relapsed, which he says Cheney attributed to stress...
d.

I think Cheney's patients were given placental stem cells rather than cord. I don't know what the difference would be in relation to this study though. I have one friend who received this treatment several months ago who is greatly improved. She is waiting for her XMRV results, so who knows how it will shake down.

Sushi
 

Andrew

Senior Member
Messages
2,513
Location
Los Angeles, USA
I can't remember now, but I think one of our members posted about a catastrophic result when her father had stem cell treatment. Does anyone else remember this?
 

Kati

Patient in training
Messages
5,497
I am not totally sure about the procedure Cheney does follow. I have been a chemo nurse working in stem cell transplantations- autologous, which means patients with life threatening diseases like multiple myeloma and lymphoma, sometimes metastatic testicular cancer would go through this procedure. They would be admitted for 3-5 weeks, given chemo that would literally destroy their bone marrow, and then reinfused their own stem cells that would have been collected a month or 2 ago. The effects of the chemo were devastating on their bodies, putting them at risk of life threatening infections, and really raw GI tract, from mouth to rectum. These procedures would be used after all other treatment options would be exhausted because of the cost and risk involved.

With someone else's stem cells, even if it's placental, one has to worry about matching the donor cells to the recipient, since there is a risk of rejection.Any little variance and you have more chances to get "Graft vs host disease" which can leave you with liver, kidney, skin damage, amongst other things. It is definitly more risky and the mortality and morbidity risk is higher.

Please let me know if Cheney uses the same procedure. I am curious.
 

Sushi

Moderation Resource Albuquerque
Messages
19,935
Location
Albuquerque
With someone else's stem cells, even if it's placental, one has to worry about matching the donor cells to the recipient, since there is a risk of rejection.

Please let me know if Cheney uses the same procedure. I am curious.

Cheney uses a clinic in Panama. Patients are given several IV infusions of someone else's stem cells (they have been carefully screened for pathogens, etc), and the later groups of patients have also received stem cells from their own fat (sorry, can't remember the name of that procedure). They don't undergo the prep that is used in the stem cell transplants you have worked with.

As I understood it from one of his patients, placental stem cells didn't have the risk of rejection. Most patients have reported progressive improvement. If they turn out to be positive for XMRV, (he is testing them) it isn't clear what effect that will have on the improvement--will the XMRV eventually undo the improvement?

Sushi
 

Kati

Patient in training
Messages
5,497
--will the XMRV eventually undo the improvement?

Sushi

My guess is if there is one B or T cell left behind that is infected with XMRV, it would sooner or later dysregulate the immune system all over again.
It's nothing scientific, just a guess.
 

dsdmom

Senior Member
Messages
397
Stem Cells engineered to Kill HIV

Did anybody see this or post about it already? My apologies if it's being discussed elsewhere.

http://www.advocate.com/UCLA_Stem_Cells_Can_Kill_HIV/

Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, made a stunning announcement Monday: Stem cells can be engineered to kill HIV.

The results, published Monday in the online journal PLoS ONE, demonstrate that human stem cells can be engineered into the equivalent of a genetic vaccine.

"We have demonstrated in this proof-of-principle study that this type of approach can be used to engineer the human immune system, particularly the T-cell response, to specifically target HIV-infected cells," lead investigator Scott Kitchen, assistant professor of medicine in the division of hematology and oncology at the Devid Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, said in a release. "These studies lay the foundation for further therapeutic development that involves restoring damaged or defective immune responses toward a variety of viruses that cause chronic disease, or even different types of tumors."

I guess the question is whether this sort of thing could work for XMRV too.
 

Sushi

Moderation Resource Albuquerque
Messages
19,935
Location
Albuquerque
Interesting stuff, dsdmom and MargeM. That sounds very different than the Cheney treatment described above - right, people who know about Cheney?

Yes, this is totally different from Cheney's approach. Very interesting! Let's watch this one.:)

Sushi
 

calzy

Senior Member
Messages
113
Location
Naples Florida
Yes, this is totally different from Cheney's approach. Very interesting! Let's watch this one.:)

Sushi
Yes you are right Sushi, my best friend was his first stem cell patient. It was cord blood. She was tested after the transplant for xmrv and she was negative. She was very classic cfs, so there is some thought that the virus was knocked out, no one know for sure.

She felt "cured" the first few months, but the gains have slowed down a bit, still doing well, if it really worked her body and system is in a healing stage, and it will be awhile for her system to heal.
 

mojoey

Senior Member
Messages
1,213
XMRV replication is a huge issue with any type of stem cells. Cheney does indeed have his patients get cord blood stem cells from Panama, which lowers the risk versus getting your own stem cells (if you have a retrovirus that is) because of the chance of getting foreign alleles from the donor, but unless those genes mark resistance to XMRV like the HIV-resistant stem cells mentioned above, theoretically tthe retrovirus will still replicate.

to clarify, it has already been scientifically established that the immune system does not reject cord blood stem cells, so matching HLA is not an issue. There have been no cases of graft versus host disease at Panama or Costa Rica. The retroviral replication is my concern.