Diabetes/Immune System
- Dec. 20, 2010 - A child who had spent more than 700 days in the hospital due to a mysterious condition was successfully treated with a cord blood stem cell transplant. Doctors had to sequence the boy's entire genetic code to discover his ailment.
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May 17, 2010 - Medical News Today reported that Australian researchers have successfully treated a woman suffering from a previously unidentified disease. The disease damaged the woman's immune system, so doctors destroyed her immune system and regrew it using adult stem cells from bone marrow.
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Apr. 15, 2009 - The BBC reported that adult stem cells have been used to successfully treat patients with type 1 diabetes. Twenty of twenty-three patients were insulin-free for a period of months or years after receiving a treatment of their own adult stem cells.
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Feb. 11, 2009 - CNN reported that a team of German scientists used adult stem cells to treat a leukemia patient who was HIV-positive and this treatment appears to have eliminated HIV from his body. The doctors used stem cells from a donor with a gene mutation that is resistant to HIV. Two years after the treatment the patient has no signs of HIV.
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June 25, 2007 - Researchers from the University of Florida reported they found that children with juvenile diabetes can be treated with blood from their own umbilical cords. Children given infusions of their own cord blood had less severe symptoms. Researchers suspect the stem cells in the umbilical cord blood played a role in helping these children.
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Apr. 11, 2007 - Researchers in Brazil have used a patient's own stem cells to help treat juvenile diabetes. One patient has been insulin free for nearly three years.
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Jan. 31, 2006 - The New Scientist carried a story on 33 people with lupus who haven’t had lupus symptoms since they received a transplant of stem cells from their own bone marrow. The study of these patients appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
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Jan. 9, 2002 - Science Daily reported that Duke University researchers reported a 95 percent sucess rate in treating infants afflicted with the autoimmune disease SCID by giving them adult stem cell injections from bone marrow. The long-term study lasted for 19 years.