AIIMS pioneers stem cell injection VIVIDHA KAUL
TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2005 11:35:37 PM ] NEW DELHI: At seven months, Ishika Gupta has already been hospitalised five times. She suffers from cardiac myopathy, a disease which is causing her heart muscles to degenerate. Not too long ago, this would have been very grim reading. But now there is hope. Doctors at AIIMS have injected stem cells taken from a bone in her leg into her tiny, frail heart. As she flashes a toothless smile and plays with her pacifier, mother Deepali hopes that Ishika's will be another success story of stem cell research at AIIMS. In another ward at the institute, a 70-year-old stroke patient is also set to be injected with stem cells to improve his condition. He suffers from a neurological disorder which has severely restricted his movements. He will undergo a stem cell injection on Friday. Both Ishika and the older patient come from very obviously modest homes. It can now be announced that AIIMS has marked a global first in pioneering stem cell medicine by the "injection method'', placing the institute right at the top of the world's medicine map. AIIMS director Dr P Venugopal spent two-and-a-half hours with TOI on Thursday explaining the features of stem cell research and treatment at the institute over the past two years. Here is the exclusive story. As part of a path-breaking study, conducted from February 2003 to January 2005, 35 cardiac patients have been given stem cell treatment and have been monitored at six, 12 and 18 month intervals. There have been no mortalities and all the patients were brought in at a stage when their hearts were beyond bypass surgery. There will now be a national stem cell centre at AIIMS which will coordinate the research and its applications. The statistics speak for themselves. After six months, 56% of the affected (read dead muscle) area injected with these cells had shown improvement. After eighteen months, this went up to 64%. Most heart patients come at a stage when a transplant is the only solution. With this, the long queue of people awaiting a heart transplant can be cut down drastically. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1031528.cms _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [email protected] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
