Information About Stem Cell Treatment Centers

By Tanisha Berg


Stem cell therapy is a treatment option that uses stem cells for the prevention and treatment of diseases and medical conditions. The techniques used treat medical conditions by replacing disease-destroyed or damaged cells with healthy ones. The techniques have proved to have a high level of efficiency although most of them are still under investigation and research because they are new. More reliable sources of the cells are also still being developed.

The completion of research into this method will open way for other applications. Stem cell treatment centers are however only capable of curing eye diseases, cancer, diabetes, heart diseases, and injuries at the moment. Therapeutic cloning, and peripheral, umbilical cord blood, and bone marrow transplants are the only stem cell therapeutic techniques being used and investigated currently.

Bone marrow therapy is the only most widely practiced form of therapy today. It has been in use for over thirty years and has helped in treating lymphoma and leukemia in cancer patients. The cells are mostly derived from adult donors and are kept in a frozen state until they are needed. A single donor can normally give up to 10, 000 doses.

One needs to understand some of the concerns involved in these therapies before going for them. Here are some of the concerns. Different stem cells are manufactured at different parts of the body during different stages of development. A perfect example is embryonic cells. These ones appear shortly after birth during the first stages. Others are manufactured and continue to exist in the body throughout the life of a person.

The body uses each type of stem cells for specific purposes. Tissue-specific cells are limited in their capabilities because they can only manufacture cells of the same type as the tissues they are derived. For instance bone marrow cells are the only one with the ability to generate blood. Blood generation can therefore only be done by that type of cells. For that reason, multiple unrelated conditions cannot be treated by a single cell type.

The treatment is faced with several challenges that make it unsafe and unsuccessful under various clinical trials. The first challenge is that it is a restricted procedure only tried under strict jurisdictions. The conditions the cells are subjected to during culture may also modify them making them lose certain qualities such as ability to control growth. Some cells also fail to behave like they should once in the body leading to serious problems.

The techniques used for transplants are also very sophisticated and risky in themselves. Tissues have been known to get damaged by the method of transplant. The introduced cell may also be contaminated with viruses, bacteria, and fungi among other pathogens which may cause diseases in the body. Immune reactions from the body can also cause severe side effects.

The high costs involved in going for the therapies also inhibit people from attending them. Sometimes several therapy sessions are necessary for the treatment to be successful yet each session is very costly. The challenges named above need to be sorted out before the techniques are declared safe.




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