People suffering from multiple sclerosis have given hope once again thanks to a clinical trial showing that stem cells transplanted into early-phase multiple sclerosis patients stopped and, in some cases, reversed the effects of the disease.

 

Multiple sclerosis, or MS, is an autoimmune disorder – one in which the body, through its immune system, launches a defensive attack against its own tissues. In the case of MS, the nerve-insulating myelin comes under assault. The degeneration of myelin affects nerves by lessening their ability to conduct signals. These problems in nerve transmission cause complications in movement, sensation, cognition, vision and other functions. MS is also known to cause muscle weakness, severe fatigue, loss of balance and coordination, and depression. The condition has no cure, as current drugs only ease symptoms. Several studies have tried to give answers to what will cure MS, but the latest one seems to offer more hope than ever.

 

Dr. Richard K. Burt, chief of the division of immunotherapy at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago and colleagues tried autologous non-myeloablative hematopoietic stem-cell transplantation on 21 patients aged 20 to 53 with relapse-remitting MS, an earlier stage in the disease in which symptoms come and go. The patients that had the condition for about five years were given no other treatment.

 

After a follow-up period of three years, 17 of the patients improved by at least one point on a standard disability scale. Moreover, none had a final score lower than they had before undergoing the stem cell therapy. Five of the patients relapsed but achieved remission after receiving other immunosuppressive therapy, the study found.

 

This is the first time when stem cell therapy was applied to young and relatively healthy adults in the early stage of the disease. Giving the same therapy to adults with the progressive form of the disease won’t work, according to Dr. Burt, as the brain loses the ability to repair itself during this stage.

 

“To date, all therapies for MS have been designed and approved because they slowed the rate of neurological decline. None of them has ever reversed neurological dysfunction, which is what this has done,” Dr. Burt said.

 

Scientists, however, are skeptic about the findings and say other trials need to be done in order to verify the benefits of stem cell therapy.

 

"We need to see a larger number of samples... and [we need to] know if the benefit they're seeing is due to the immune system being reset or because the immune system has been suppressed and will return as the way it was," said Patricia O'Looney, vice president of biomedical research at the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

 

MS is most common in young adults, with more than 90 percent of the cases being diagnosed before the age of 55, and fewer than five percent diagnosed before the age of five. Women are two to three times more likely to develop the disease, which afflicts more than 350,000 patients in the United States.

 

The study findings were published online Jan. 30 in The Lancet Neurology and will appear in the March print issue of the journal.