Multiple sclerosis symptoms have been reversed in early stage patients by using bone marrow stem cell transplants to reset the immune system.
Some 81 percent of patients in the early phase study showed signs of improvement with the treatment, which used chemotherapy to destroy the immune system, and injections of the patient's bone marrow cells taken beforehand to rebuild it.
Multiple sclerosis occurs when the immune system mistakenly attacks the myelin sheath protecting nerve cells. It affects 2.5 million people globally and can cause mild illness in some people and permanent disability in others.
Symptoms may include numbness or weakness in the limbs, loss of vision and an unsteady gait.
"MS usually occurs in adults," said Dr. Richard Burt of Northwestern University in Chicago, lead author of the study. "Before they get the disease, their immune systems work well until something happens to make the immune system attack itself."
His approach is aimed at turning back the clock to a time before the immune system began attacking itself.
Burt said the approach -- called autologous non-myeloablative hematopoietic stem-cell transplantation -- is a bit gentler than the therapy used in cancer patients because rather than destroying the entire bone marrow, it attacks just the immune system component of the marrow, making it less toxic.
Burt and colleagues tried the treatment on 21 patients aged 20 to 53 with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis, an earlier stage in the disease in which symptoms come and go.
Patients in the study were not helped by at least six months of standard treatment with interferon beta.
After an average follow-up of about three years, 17 patients improved by at least one measure on a disability scale, and the disease stabilized in all patients.
Patients continued to improve for up to 24 months after the transplant procedure, and then stabilized. Many had improvements in walking, vision, incontinence and limb strength.
"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," Burt said.
Adapted from the Multiple Sclerosis Resource Centre announcement.
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