lundi 6 octobre 2014

Understanding What Happens In Stem Cell Treatment Centers

By Jocelyn Davidson


Stem cell therapy has been a field of much concern to many scientists and scientific facilities for a very long time. This therapy uses stem cells to treat and prevent conditions and diseases in both humans and animals. This medication is still under intensive research and most of the treatments discovered are still not in any use. Most stem cell treatment centers practice bone marrow transplant.

Bone marrow transplant is the only kind of stem cell therapy that is in wide use. It is employed in the treatment of blood diseases like leukemia in cancer patients. It has been in use for several years and continues to be researched further. In future, this therapy will be able to be used in the treatment of heart diseases, diabetes, HIV AIDS, deafness, missing teeth, baldness, neurodegeneration, infertility, and formation of blood cells among several other conditions.

The sources of the cells employed in treatment are different and some are being criticized a lot by critics of science. Embryonic stem cells are the most widely used cells. They are isolated from embryos before they get cultured and prepared before they are used . According to critics, the methods used to acquire the cells promote human cloning and abortion. Other ways are induction of pluripotent stem cells and use of somatic cell nuclear transfer methods.

Treatments which are formed basing on transplanting of cultured umbilical cord blood continue to face challenges and criticism in marketing. This is because this field is highly criticized. The controversies lead to lack of finances by research facilities, which shut done later while researchers are discouraged . Some treatments which would be complete by now are hindered by the challenges.

Therapy works through regeneration of damaged or lost cells in the affected area. Cells are introduced in the affected area where they stimulate formation of lost body cells. This effect has been determined to be able to treat conditions that lead to brain degeneration such as amyyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Alzheimer disease, and Parkinson disease. In the same way, normal body tissue can be generated to replace the typical scar tissue that forms on wounds.

Many people have high hopes in these therapies but they do not understand the technicalities involves. First, one must understand that human and animal bodies have stem cells of different types which perform specific functions in human body. This limits their ability to treat more than one condition especially if the conditions are unrelated. Tissue specific cells only perform the function they are meant for and specialized in.

Various therapies use very complicated techniques to introduce the cells into the body. The introduction process is itself very risky and involves a lot of risks to the patient. After the cells are derived from the body, they are cultured in before they are reintroduced into the body. The culturing targets to instruct the cells to behave in a given way once introduced into the body. Such instructions may fail causing severe effects.

The therapy also involves very high costs to be performed. This makes it unaffordable to most people. People therefore continue suffering because they cannot afford treatment.




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