A Cure For Crohn's? Amazing New Trial

[Bats]

I read about it in the Daily Mail today .. too late to help my sister who now has a stoma but for others, the end may be in sight.

From the surgeon .. Chris Hawkey
'Stem cells are the body's 'master cells', found in bone marrow, and will grow into different kinds of blood cells. By using these young cells which have not yet learned to attack the body in abnormal ways, we can effectively start afresh. We're using them before they start acting like delinquent youths.'

Basically, they gather stem cells by first giving the patient some chemo. This firstly suppresses the cells, then it has a rebound effect, so the doctor adds growth hormones to assist this. They then inject growth factors to make the cells multiply before extracting them and freezing them until they're ready to go back into the patient. This is after the patient is given more chemo so that the rogue immune blood cells are destroyed.

Just like a blood transfusion, the stem cells are then put back into the body and the young, undamaged cells lodge in the bone marrow and start producing normal blood cells within weeks.

It does say that the treatment costs around £24k, but if we could have that choice now for my sister, we'd find the money. The treatment is only available as part of the AUTOLOGOUS STEM CELL TRANSPLANT INTERNATIONAL CROHNS DISEASE TRAIL (phew!) .. they will be recruiting patients for another year soon. Email to: astic@nottingham.ac.uk

I suggest reading the whole article in The Mail (page 49) before emailing!
It's fantastic!

[disneylover]

This is quite extreme treatment. I am very lucky that my chrohns is not that bad. I can't imagine the dilemma for sufferes with this disease that is chronic.

[Guest]

OMG that has actually made me cry here, i am so miserable right now, is it today's daily mail?

[Bats]

Originally Posted by RobynPrincess

OMG that has actually made me cry here, i am so miserable right now, is it today's daily mail?

See more...

Yes todays paper. You may get it online too .. it's in the Health bit. Only wish this had been a choice 3 years ago for my sister.

[Disney_time]

£24K is not too expensive if you add up that some of the treatments for crohns cost £1k to £2K per month. I hope they prove that it will work for everyone.

[DIBBadmin]

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