A Biotech Company Says It Put Dopamine-Making Cells Into People's Brains 30
A biotech company has conducted a small-scale trial involving the implantation of lab-made neurons into the brains of 12 people with Parkinson's disease. The implanted neurons are designed to produce dopamine, which is deficient in Parkinson's patients, and early data suggests they may have survived and improved symptoms in some cases. MIT Technology Review reports: The study is one of the largest and most costly tests yet of embryonic-stem-cell technology, the controversial and much-hyped approach of using stem cells taken from IVF embryos to produce replacement tissue and body parts. The replacement neurons were manufactured using powerful stem cells originally sourced from a human embryo created an in vitro fertilization procedure. According to data presented by Henchliffe and others on August 28 at the International Congress for Parkinson's Disease and Movement Disorder in Copenhagen, there are also hints that the added cells had survived and were reducing patients' symptoms a year after the treatment.
These clues that the transplants helped came from brain scans that showed an increase in dopamine cells in the patients' brains as well as a decrease in "off time," or the number of hours per day the volunteers felt they were incapacitated by their symptoms. However, outside experts expressed caution in interpreting the findings, saying they seemed to show inconsistent effects -- some of which might be due to the placebo effect, not the treatment. Because researchers can't see the cells directly once they are in a person's head, they instead track their presence by giving people a radioactive precursor to dopamine and then watching its uptake in their brains in a PET scanner. "It is encouraging that the trial has not led to any safety concerns and that there may be some benefits," says Roger Barker, who studies Parkinson's disease at the University of Cambridge. But Barker called the evidence the transplanted cells had survived "a bit disappointing."
He said the results were not so strong, adding that it's "still a bit too early to know" whether the transplanted cells took hold and repaired the patients' brains.
These clues that the transplants helped came from brain scans that showed an increase in dopamine cells in the patients' brains as well as a decrease in "off time," or the number of hours per day the volunteers felt they were incapacitated by their symptoms. However, outside experts expressed caution in interpreting the findings, saying they seemed to show inconsistent effects -- some of which might be due to the placebo effect, not the treatment. Because researchers can't see the cells directly once they are in a person's head, they instead track their presence by giving people a radioactive precursor to dopamine and then watching its uptake in their brains in a PET scanner. "It is encouraging that the trial has not led to any safety concerns and that there may be some benefits," says Roger Barker, who studies Parkinson's disease at the University of Cambridge. But Barker called the evidence the transplanted cells had survived "a bit disappointing."
He said the results were not so strong, adding that it's "still a bit too early to know" whether the transplanted cells took hold and repaired the patients' brains.
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Joking
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it refers to the implanted cells, not the test subjects. now go have some coffee.
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it was a modding joke.
(you do need a sense of modding humor to stick around here ...)
Fire the flies (Score:2)
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And then, the article is about Alzheimer treatments. But some people are so in love with their own opinions that have to push them even when completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
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It's about Parkinson's not Alzheimer. Maybe you are affected :)
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But sure hey, rather than look into the actual causes (a diet high in refined carbs for example is linked to increased risk, for one thing) let's just fuck with peoples brains after the fact! You make more money that way too. To me th
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And what exactly seems to be the problem with that?
Parkinson's Disease (Score:3)
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>"anything that improves treatment should be considered"
Not sure I would agree with "anything", but many things should be considered.
>"than just a lack of dopamine."
Or perhaps dopamine receptors, which this treatment doesn't do.
>"My question is, is this superior to giving the patients L-Dopa"
You asked the same question I wanted to ask. My limited research indicates it is more complicated than just dopamine. But this proposed treatment doesn't seem like anything more than just giving dopamine, whi
Re:Parkinson's Disease (Score:4, Insightful)
Parkinsons can be horrifying. People kinda assume its the "shaky hands disease", but it gets soooo much nastier than that. The usual way this thing kills you is you lose your gag reflex and choke to death. Recently happened to a friend of mines mother. Took her parkinsons mother out for a cake and coffee, and the poor woman choked to death on an inhaled crumb. Normally for a healthy person you violently cough it out and other than feeling like you just did an entire tour of vietnam in 25 seconds your good to go. She had no capacity to cough it out, and hitting her on the back wasnt going to help.
As you can imagine my friend was rather distraught about it. Worst part is, my friend was a trauma doctor. And she watched her mother die knowing nothing was capable of saving her.
Parkinsons is a nasty evil disease. Like potentially cancer level nasty. Anything that can wind this fucking thing back is going to be amazing. Lets hope his works.
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A trauma doctor didn't know how to properly use the Heimlich Maneuver ( https://my.clevelandclinic.org... [clevelandclinic.org] ) to clear food from the throat?
Slapping someone on the back doesnt work for adults. Was something else was going on?
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Slapping on the back doesn't generally work when the affected person is upright because gravity is working against you. For a small child, you would place their belly on your knee with their head angled slightly down and gently use the heel of your palm to pat their back. Your knee will be placed just under the sternum so it acts similarly to the other maneuver. In theory, the physics of this would work for an adult as well, just extremely awkward to set up in heat of the moment when time is of the essence.
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Thats for obstructions. A crumb is not an obstruction, its something your body will build up liquid with the aim of expelling that liquid with a cough that never comes because the cough mechanism is gone thanks to the neurological disorder. Its a slow and painful death by drowning, and the Heimlich maneuver wont help that.
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Heimlich Maneuver is for obstructions and people who have a gag reflex, you yoink the obstruction up to somewhere a good cough can clear the obstruction.
This was a cake crumb, it settles in the lung and the body starts building up fluids to expell it in a cough that would never come because that reflex is gone. The woman drowned over 2 - 3 days.
Corporate ignorance and academic indoctrination (Score:3)
At the beginning of the 19th century, a group of so called specialists set out to label most alternative medicine as snake-oil.
Just for the sake of big pharma making more profits.
By doing so, students of medicine are indoctrinated from the first day to reject anything that does not fall in line with the products that Big Pharma makes a huge profit on.
Dutch medicine professors found that sodium could be used for certain cancer treatments.
The terminated the clinical trials as soon as they figured out that the
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I'm gonna make the classic joke which applies here; if "alternative medicine" works then it's just called "medicine".
Like what form of sodium? What type of cancer? Was in in-vivo or in-vitro? Are you talking about this study? [nih.gov] that they are trying to bury deep down in *checks notes* the public NIH database?
Alternative researchers can claim anything, but what they want to do and can't do is and get mad about is following the process to actually prove that out, double blind, RCT, versus placebo. Meanwhile we
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Levadopa only works in the short term. In the late stages it not only stops working, but has a negative effect -- and that too even when co-administered with a DDCI such as carbidopa.
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L-Dopa is a band-aid. The problem is the body adapts to the artificial dopamine created and as a result begins to produce even less. It's not a huge issue for those diagnosed later in life, as over 5 years the issues are not that obvious and quality of life improves. Longer than that, and it leads to greater loss of dopamine produced naturally and creates more a
Control Group? (Score:2)
Gosh, I would not want to be in the placebo-control group.