Source: Reuters
Posted: May 6, 2008 2:37pm EDT
Summary:
Reuters reports patients with Multiple Sclerosis experienced remission of their symptoms after receiving bone marrow transplants:
"An experiment that went wrong may provide a new way to treat multiple sclerosis, a Canadian researcher said... Patients who got bone marrow stem-cell transplants -- similar to those given to leukemia patients -- have enjoyed a mysterious remission of their disease. Researchers had thought that destroying the bone marrow would improve symptoms within a year. After all, MS is believed to be an autoimmune disease, in which immune system cells mistakenly attack the fatty myelin sheath that protects nerve strands. Patients lose the ability to move as the thin strands that connect one nerve cell to another wither. Instead, improvements began two years after treatment."
