Several outlets are spreading a discouraging development in stem cell and fetal cell implant science, reported by researchers in Nature Medicine. In two studies, one from researchers in Sweden and the other from a team at Chicago’s Rush Medical Ctr, implants of fresh tissue into brains of people with Parkinson’s were seen to develop the same defects over time as do the natural, dopamine-secreting tissues in the brain’s substantia nigra whose failure causes the disease. A third study, from Harvard, found the opposite. It’s not, apparently, entirely bad news. While most people with the grafts were found, at autopsy and many years later, to have clearly visible cellular changes associated with the disease even in the fresher tissue, they also had continued to do better than they had before the procedure. Notably one woman, reported by the Rush team and who died for non-Parkinson’s reasons sixteen years after a graft, had experienced a worsening of the ailment after initial improvement.
It would be tempting for reporters to write the news as a dramatic turn in the unfolding field of tissue transplants for this an other diseases. It seems more prudent to present it as one of many wrinkles inevitable in such fields. Bloomberg’s Tom Randall and Elizabeth Lopatto describe it as “diminishing hopes of permanent relief” in the lede, but fill the body of the story with many maybes and other qualifiers – and mainly describe the disease, how the grafts are supposed to work, and what was seen to occur.
AFP more emphatically say the results “place a question mark” over such pioneering treatment. A sharply contrasting tack is from Reuters‘s Maggie Fox – the fact that the study confirms such grafts last for years is for her the news – that the benefits are thus clear.
Other Stories:
HealthDay (via USNews & World Report) focusses on the doubts these studies lend toward using stem cells to replace diseased tissue in the expectation they will evade the fate of patient’s own tissue ; Tampa Bay Tribune Lisa Greene localizes the story to one of the patients in the study, treated at the Univ. of South Florida, while her story suggests that maybe this technique has a solid future, or maybe something better ought by found ;
Grist for the Mill:
Rush Medical Ctr. Press Release (via ScienceDaily) ; Mt. Sinai Sch. of Medicine Press Release ; Somewhat related: Imperial College London Press Release ;
Other Stem Cell News: BBC reports that Harvard researchers have prompted skin cells from patients with eight different diseases to revert to a pluripotent stem cell state. The research is not yet suitable for clinical application, the story says. But it does encourage researchers who hope such stem cells, derived from a patient’s own tissue, can be induced to replace tissues in organs that have become unhealthy.
-CP
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