Stem Cells to Treat Brain Injury in Children

BigDukeSix writes "The first stem cell trial with widespread public health implications is set to begin in Houston. From the article: "Trauma is far and away the main cause of death and disability among children, and the main reason children die from trauma is brain injury...The clinical trial is the first to apply stem cells to treat traumatic brain injury. It does not involve embryonic stem cells.""

Comments

Texas children vs India poor

[tomhath]

A couple of days ago people were freaking because experimental drugs were being used on India's poor. http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/1 9/1838223&tid=191&tid=219 So how come nobody's up in arms about this experimental procedure being used on children in Texas? Presumably the Indian subjects were in need of treatment too.

This study is bogus

[LenE]

Stem cells might be a neat buzzword to get funding, but as a parent of a child with serious brain damage, I can tell you that this is more likely a politically motivated stunt to grease the slippery slope of stem cell research, than something that will generate measurable results. After all, nobody wants to hurt brain damaged children.

The reason I'm so cynical is that babies are very resilient, and for the most part they are like stem cell factories on their own. As they grow, they produce new brain and nerve material, which adults cannot do. It is adult disease and injury (and greed) that fuels the stem cell craze, since our adult bodies cannot heal like young children can.

My daughter had a stroke two months before she was born. This stroke wiped out 85% of the left hemisphere of her brain, replacing it with a fluid filled cyst. When she was three months old, she had an operation to add a drainage passage to this cyst, as it was filling with cerebral spinal fluid and had expanded to fill the entire left half of her cranium cavity. This operation cut through parts of her brain, leaving her completely blind.

At nine months of age, the drainage passage had collapsed, and the cyst had enlarged to block all drainage of cerebral spinal fluid from her brain. Her head swelled with a condition know as hydrocephalus, and she almost died. That night, the CAT scans showed that 75% of the volume that should have been occupied by her brain was filled with fluid. She had an emergency operation to install an artificial drainage valve (a shunt). This event was catastrophic, and was like having her "reset" switch activated, she had to re-learn everything.

Now, the good news. She is eighteen months old now, and has recovered remarkably. Her last CAT scan showed that the original cyst had been reduced to only 25% of the left half of her brain, and the right half is completely restored. The original passage that was cut, that caused her blindness, has healed shut. Her vision is steadily improving and she shows signs that she may be functional without the use of a cane someday. Sure, she's a little behind developmentally, but she is showing lots of promise. All of her healing was without the use of any stem cell treatment, because babies are stem cell factories. Her same injuries would have killed an adult, several times over.

-- Len

Re:okay then, come up with a better response

[the chao goes mu]

Hate to argue against Segan, but those "wasteful wars" are part of what got us to where we are today. Without the V2 would we have space exploration? Without the typhus and cholera of world war I would there have been as much pressure for antibiotics and insecticides? Without constant warfare would we have had any reason to move from copper to bronze to iron to steel? Without britain stripping her forests for the navy would she have needed to move to coal power? Ok, so wars destroy, and for that I condemn them, but you can't say "if we held hands and sang ku-bah-yah for 20 centuries we would have flying cars now". War is part of the history which brought us here, and part of what drove our progress.