If Stem cell Therapy is not available at this time in this country, assuming that SCT is the way forward, at what stage should/would someone with PD take a chance and look for help abroad. Has anyone had SCT in another country with any degree of success??
unfortunately, as a safe and effective treatment, it doesnt seem to exist. which doesnt mean there aren't plenty of people willing to accept payment for it. the main effect it is to remove money from your bank account.
Ted Dawson, M.D., Ph.D., professor of neurology and co-director of NeuroICE :
Lots of people thought Parkinson’s was going to be low hanging fruit for stem cell transplantation. But we still don’t fully understand the transplantation process and how to optimize it. There needs to be a lot of work done to get to that point.
PUK
There are no stem cell treatments available today for people with Parkinson's. Studies on stem cells are still at an early stage and, as yet, no appropriate clinical trials have been carried out. Only when stem cells have been thoroughly tested and proven to be safe will they become available to people with Parkinson's.
September 1, 2014
California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, San Francisco, California, USA
Workshop participants agreed that designing an effective stem cell-based therapy for PD will require further research and development in several key areas.
Neurologists should take care to warn patients about the dangers of possibly unproven stem cell treatments, says a prominent stem cell researcher. Dr Ann Tsukamoto (pictured) from StemCells Inc, who visited Sydney this week as part of a tour promoting stem cell research says the growth in the number of people practising unproven stem cell therapies is alarming. She urges neurologists to advise patients to be wary of these so-called miracle treatments. “If they think they want to send their patients to some of these clinics, they should ask them: do they have the equivalent approval and do they charge for treatment?” Dr Tsukamoto says patients that pay thousands of dollars to be in a clinical trial are likely to be wasting their money...
