Patients have been spending thousands of dollars on stem cell therapies that do not work. A study proved that stem cells do not cure the disease than what was promised by ads. Stem cells are used to produce any type of cells in the body. Stem cell therapy is a treatment that repairs tissues by growing the cells in a lab culture. After it has grown, doctors implant them into patients.
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Stem cell tourism
Based on the study, clinics promote "stem cell tourism." They promise patients to cure their diseases. Most of their patients have diseases without cures. Patients with multiple sclerosis (MS), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and spinal cord injuries go to them for treatments. Doctors charge people tens of thousands of dollars with useless procedures.
The authors said that patients and their families have no choice but to undergo radical treatment because of their vulnerable conditions. They studied patients who have illnesses that often fall for bogus stem cell clinics. Eighty-nine percent of them said that patients or healthcare givers asked them about the treatment. Ninety-one percent of them have a disease with no cure, and 43 percent asked for approval of the procedure.
Neurologists said that 65 percent of their patients received stem cell therapy related to stem cell tourism.
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Complications after the treatment
About one-fourth of the neurologists said their patients suffered complications because of the treatments, where four died. Some had inflamed brain, stroke, sepsis, seizures, and limb weakness. Others had relapsed or worsened MS, hepatitis C, infections, meningitis injections, and spinal cord tumors.
Lost thousands for nothing
A doctor said he had a patient who suffered spinal cord injury when he was dropped off the table during the procedure. Other patients said they did not have medical records, paid thousands but did not feel any better. A 60-year-old patient with Parkinson's disease spent $25,000, and another patient with MS spent about $50,000, and both had pinched nerves and hepatitis C after the procedure.
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Authors wrote that many patients with complaints like this said they paid in cash. Sadly, no records were found about them undergoing the procedures. Due to this, the team noted that subjects did not recall accurate procedures. But what they are sure of is that stem cell tourism is severe and is not reported.
Director of the Comprehensive Multiple Sclerosis Center at UConn Health and senior author of the study, Dr. Jamie Imitola, stated his ideas. He said that the bogus practitioners promise cures on their fancy websites. But they only steal the patients' money without doing anything healthwise.
He told Newsweek that non-medical people call it stem cell therapy, but it should not be. He believes that therapies are only called such if it has proven to cure illness. He explained that injecting fat cells in the patient's spinal cord without proof of effectivity should not be called therapy.
Besides being illegal, stem cell tourism is an unethical industry. They sell snake oil and undermines public confidence in science, said Imitola.
