UCSD To Test Safety of Spinal Stem Cell Injection 43
An anonymous reader writes Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have launched a clinical trial to investigate the safety of neural stem cell transplantation in patients with chronic spinal cord injuries. This Phase I clinical trial is recruiting eight patients for the 5-year study. Pre-clinical studies of these cells by Ciacci and Martin Marsala, MD, at the UC San Diego School of Medicine, showed that these grafted neural stem cells improved motor function in spinal cord injured rats with minimal side effects indicating that human clinical trials are now warranted.
Re:Worst that could happen? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm guessing you don't have a spinal cord injury, because if you did then you'd be happy with just about anything that could improve it. Since in a lot of cases, those pain centres are already "on." I'm still debating on getting a baclofen pump, that dumps the crap right into my spinal fluid. I already passed on the spinal fusion, since the failure rate and chance of being a paraplegic or parapligic was 53%
As for worse? Well death is always a possibility too, but we're already heading down that road. The only question is when you get there and how.
Upbeat about this trial (Score:5, Informative)