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The range of conditions now treated by stem cell therapy (also known as regenerative medicine) is huge. The list includes spinal cord injuries, Parkinson’s disease, macular degeneration, multiple sclerosis, strokes, and osteoarthritis. Indeed, you can be forgiven for thinking that this type of treatment is a panacea for all our ills. But what about stem cell therapy for CRPS?
See also: Treatments for CRPS
What is stem cell therapy?
Stem cells are the body’s supply of raw materials. Unlike a builder visiting a yard to select different products for the job, our bodies require just one. That’s because when stem cells divide to produce ‘daughter cells’, those new cells can either become new stem cells or metamorphose into cells with a specific function, e.g. blood cells, bone cells, brain cells, or heart muscle cells.
In regenerative therapy, laboratory-grown stem cells are manipulated into the type of cells required before transplantation into the recipient. For example, for heart disease, new heart muscle cells are injected into the heart muscle to contribute to repairing the damaged muscle.
Stem cell therapy for CRPS
If you have the cash or a generous credit card limit, some clinics are already offering stem cell therapy for CRPS despite major knowledge gaps and a lack of recognised treatment protocols. This feeding off people’s desperation has led to increasing calls for tighter regulation in the sector.
In terms of filling those knowledge gaps, in the US, the Cleveland Clinic has received grant funding of $5.5 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop stem cell therapy for CRPS.
For many years, the University of California, San Francisco, has led the way in research on using stem cells to overcome the neurological effects of peripheral nerve damage, including pain. This is achieved by transplanting a specialist type of brain cell (Cortical GABAergic Precursor Cells) into the spinal cord.
Research lead Professor Allan Basbaum says the study reveals “an entirely new perspective on the circuits that process the injury messages that generate acute and persistent pain and on novel approaches to therapy.”
According to Professor Basbaum, neuropathic pain is a “disease” of the central nervous system. If nerve damage causes pain, to alleviate that pain the nerve damage requires treatment. However, traditional drug therapies typically provide only temporary benefits and result in side effects. So, the San Francisco team’s approach instead involves repairing the nerve damage with stem cell therapy.
Human trial
Although the San Francisco team achieved positive results, it must be stressed that those results were achieved at the pre-human trial stage. But in 2014, the Pan American Journal of Thermology reported the results of a human trial in Pennsylvania.
In that case, the subject (a nurse) had been diagnosed with CRPS in her left lower leg and foot. Following a panoply of CRPS treatments and therapies with variable success, they proceeded with stem cell therapy. The cells were harvested from the subject’s hip and transplanted into her left calf. A platelet-rich plasma booster was injected 30 days later. They reported the results as follows:
“At two week follow up trophic skin changes already showed signs of lessening. The patient had also begun to weight bear on the left leg and reported less allodynia. By the time the 30 day PRP booster was performed she was no longer using adaptive aids to walk however compensatory gait persisted. Six weeks after the stem cell procedure trophic skin changes, sudo and vasomotor instability, and allodynia had dramatically improved.”
Understandably, there is well-placed optimism for stem cell therapy for CRPS. But questions remain. For example, does the treatment offer hope to those with established, non-localised CRPS? Clearly, the results of wide-ranging human clinical trials are awaited before stem cell therapy for CRPS becomes the go-to treatment.