![]() As a result, the number of patients getting treatment outside the medical system is far higher than the number of patients enrolling in studies, Berkowitz said. We don't know whether it’s working or not.’’īut some people may feel there is little other hope. But these are private clinics and they may be having a lot more complications that are not being disclosed. “It looks exciting that professional football players do it. Medical journals are increasingly writing about the phenomenon of stem cell tourism and have published reports of at least two other cases involving tumors, Berkowitz said. and if you took the same procedure across the border, to do it legally, you’d have to get FDA approval.’’ “In Mexico you can treat someone with stem cells. “Even though there are probably hundreds of clinics in the US, when people go abroad the risk goes way up,’’ said Paul Knoepfler, a professor at the University of California Davis School of Medicine, who runs a popular stem cell research blog. But the US Food and Drug Administration signaled earlier this year that it planned to crack down on these clinics and issued draft guidelines explaining that even procedures using a patient’s own cells require approval by the agency.Ĭlinics overseas have more leeway and use stem cells from donors as well as fetal tissue. In the United States, dozens of clinics have sprung up in recent years, largely avoiding regulation because they use cells extracted from a patient’s own body. They most often pushed treatments for multiple sclerosis, antiaging, Parkinson’s disease, stroke, and spinal cord injury - diseases and conditions for which there is no evidence that stem cell therapy is effective, though some are being studied. ![]() Aaron Berkowitz, director of global neurology at the Brigham and the letter’s lead author, said it is hard to know how many people undergo unproven stem cell therapy.Ī paper published in 2014 in the journal Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease identified 224 websites advertising stem cell clinics in 21 countries. ![]() I read all the cautionary tales even though I didn’t believe them.ĭr. ![]() “The consensus was stem cell therapy was going to be the future of treatment for stroke. A life lying down in bed is not the place to be,’’ he said. In the months after his stroke, Gass researched potential treatments constantly. Yet, bone marrow transplant, a treatment for leukemia, is the only approved stem cell therapy in the United States. Hockey legend Gordie Howe received experimental stem cell treatments in Tijuana, Mexico, in December 2014 - treatments that his family credited with helping prolong his life after a debilitating stroke about two months earlier. Professional athletes have helped popularize the clinics by seeking out stem cell therapy for strokes and shoulder and knee injuries. They are promoting their methods to patients suffering from strokes, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease), Alzheimer’s, and other conditions for which there are few good options. “It’s hard to know what to call it,’’ Chi said.ĭoctors have treated Gass with radiation to shrink the mass, which has helped somewhat, but they are also searching for other solutions.ĭoctors have been increasingly warning that stem cell clinics are proliferating around the world with little oversight. ![]() Most of the cells were not Gass’s but from another source. Brigham pathologists tested the tissue taken from Gass’s spine and determined it was a tumor-like growth but did not have mutations associated with cancer and therefore could not be treated with chemotherapy. ![]()
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