Cell therapy: possible side effects
Due to stem cell treatment, a woman's nose grew on her back
Copper news
An attempt to alleviate the condition of a paralyzed young woman by implanting stem cells taken from the nasal mucosa into the spinal cord ended with a three-centimeter neoplasm consisting of nasal tissues growing at the transplant site, writes NewScientist magazine (Stem cell treatment causes nasal growth in woman's back).
The patient, who is a US citizen, in 2005 participated in the first phase of clinical trials of the potential of nasal stem cells in the therapy of paralysis, held at the Hospital de Egas Moniz in Lisbon (Portugal). For transplantation in this case, neural cells similar to stem cells and lining neuroepithelial cells, which are responsible for the constant regeneration of olfactory neurons in the nose, contained in the epithelium of the nasal passages, are taken. According to the experimenters, these cells develop into mature neural cells and restore damaged nerve connections in the spinal cord.
Other research groups experimenting with this method cultured tissue samples taken from the nose before transplantation and implanted only the required cells into the spinal cord of patients. But the researchers from Hospital de Egas Moniz passed this stage and directly transplanted nasal samples into the spinal cord of the test participants. In 2010, Portuguese scientists reported on the success of using this method on 20 patients whose spinal cord was damaged at various levels. According to a publication in the journal Neurorehabilitation & Neural Repair (Lima et al., Olfactory Mucosal Autografts and Rehabilitation for Chronic Traumatic Spinal Cord Injury), 11 test participants showed an improvement in sensitivity and motor function. At the same time, one participant had a worsening condition, one developed meningitis, and four had negative side effects.
It is not known whether the woman in question was included in this pool, but, as reported, the treatment did not help her, and in 2013, eight years after the implantation of nasal tissues into the spinal cord, she had to undergo surgery due to increased pain in the transplant area. Surgeons removed a three-centimeter benign neoplasm from the woman's spinal cord, consisting of nasal tissues with inclusions of bones and nerve endings that are not connected to spinal nerves. The neoplasm secreted an abundant viscous secret, the accumulation of which, as suggested by neurosurgeon Brian Dlouhy, who performed the operation, caused pain in the patient. The report on the operation will be published in the Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine.
"This case once again confirms how primitive our knowledge is about how stem cells behave in the body," commented George Daley, a stem cell researcher from the Harvard University School of Medicine. Experimental stem cell therapy, even carried out under appropriate conditions by qualified specialists, can have unpredictable consequences, said Alexey Bersenev, an analyst in the field of stem cell research, in this regard.
Currently, more than a thousand official clinical trials of stem cell therapy for various diseases are ongoing in the world, but the number of patients who have applied to private clinics for such treatment is unknown. There are also no official statistics on the undesirable effects of such therapy. In the scientific literature, only a few cases of development due to stem cell treatment of various tumors have been reported. For example, one of the first patients, a 50-year-old American who had fetal stem cells transplanted in China in 1989 to treat Parkinson's disease, developed a teratoma in the brain, which was discovered after his death in 1991.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru08.07.2014