GIVING a small group of people with multiple sclerosis a brand new immune system built from their stem cells appears to have stopped the disease in its tracks.
鈥淔or the first time ever in the history of treating MS, we have reversed disability,鈥� says of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.
In MS, a person鈥檚 own immune system attacks the fatty myelin sheath that wraps around nerve cells, slowing down the transmission of nerve impulses. Burt鈥檚 team wondered if they could prevent the destruction of myelin by giving people with MS a new immune system grown from their own stem cells.
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The researchers extracted adult stem cells from the bone marrow of 12 women and 11 men in the early stages of MS who had not responded to a common drug treatment after six months, before destroying their existing immune systems. When the stem cells were injected back into the body, they developed into 鈥渘aive鈥� immune cells that did not attack myelin.
Three years later, 17 of the patients had improved by at least 1 point on a standard disability scale, while none of the patients鈥� conditions had deteriorated (The Lancet Neurology, ). It is still unclear whether patients鈥� immune systems might revert to attacking myelin at a later date.
If larger trials of the treatment are successful, stem cells could provide an alternative approach for people with MS who do not respond to traditional drugs.