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Stem cell transplant 'game changer' for MS patients
Doctors say a stem cell transplant could be a "game changer" for many patients with multiple sclerosis. Results from an international trial show that it was able to stop the disease and improve symptoms. It involves wiping out a patient's immune system using cancer drugs and then rebooting it with a stem cell transplant.
Louise Willetts, 36, from Rotherham, is now symptom-free and told me: "It feels like a miracle." A total of 100,000 people in the UK have MS, which attacks nerves in the brain and spinal cord.
There are just a few problems, however: The experimental procedure is under scrutiny from regulators, the experiment's web site may have overstated the effectiveness of the not-yet-proven treatment, and patients have to foot the bill. Oh, and no one has seen the study yet.
[...] The results reported in the BBC piece are just the preliminary findings. And that leaves a number of questions still unanswered — are these results permanent? What are the risks? Who isn't suited to have their immune system wiped out through aggressive chemo?
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has also flagged some serious issues in the study's protocol. If that sounds boring and bureaucratic, think of it this way: for a few months, the lead investigator somehow forgot to report a number of nasty side effects of the treatment, including chest infection and the worsening of conditions as diverse as vertigo, narcolepsy, stuttering, and hyperglycemia, among others.
One thing we know for sure? It's real expensive. The BBC noted it cost patients £30,000 ($42,000) to receive the experimental treatment, but biomedical scientist and science writer Paul Knoepfler, who has been following the trial since last year, says it ran some patients between $100,000 and $200,000.
Related: Low Vitamin-D Genes Linked to Multiple Sclerosis
Scientists Identify Potential Inhibitors of Cancer Metastasis and MS
Risky Stem Cell Treatment Reverses MS in 70% of Patients in Small Study
(Score: 2) by cocaine overdose on Thursday March 22 2018, @05:37AM (2 children)
What a depressing disease. I just finished watching a nice girl deteriorate into death for years with MS. Her parents and brother had to invest a lot of emotional, mental, and capital resources into taking care of her, and then she's just gone. There's not much more to say, except it looked like it sucked. My mental process went a bit more like "well, shit's fucked might as well do it my way," but with MS you don't have the freedom to say "fuck it, let's go skydiving with an LMG over D.C."
Also calling NotSanguine, if these user tags work: FDA fucks up once again. If you want more proof, try looking through their "open database," as it's labeled. But the ingredients on the tin are wrong and there's no pull tab. And when you open it, there's another fucking can inside!
And this treatment is likely a sham. Knowing a lot of people with terminal debilitating illnesses, they go desperate, sometimes full on delusional, and will try anything at all that could work. Lyme disease is one that comes to mind. There's really nothing to be done about post-lyme disorders and I've seen "Lyme Disease Doctors/Specialists," drain people dry of their money and their insurance rates. Years of IV antibiotics, expensive and obscure supplements (not your run of the mill GNC/CVS shit, I'm talking specifically breed and reduced THC tinctures, various mixtures of ground animal organs, many in the hundreds of dollars for a month's dose, and mitochondrial gene therapy) that likely had kickbacks involved, and liberal prescription of various class I substances (though at that point, the medical community agreed there was no treatment besides improving quality of life).
It probably won't fix MS. Most of the shit in the medical sphere is slow to progress and incremental. Anytime you hear "breakthrough," it's definitely a scam, there's no "maybe."
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Thursday March 22 2018, @06:56AM
Sometimes it is.
E.g. Sulfonamides [wikipedia.org] (the ones that indirectly triggered [wikipedia.org] later the creation of FDA)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 22 2018, @07:52PM
She's in her late 50s having had it since her teens or twenties. She still walks every day, even though she shuffles like an old lady and has for at least 20+ years. Sad part is only one of her kids really spends any time with her anymore and her husband spends a lot of time gone, leaving her unattended in a house that could be fatal for her to enter or exit (the inside is fine for moving around, but it is elevated and has staircases for the front and rear porches that a tumble down could prove fatal.)
Point being: Just like ALS, some people can manage to live with it well into the latter years of a normal lifetime.