Stem Cell Therapy Centers Offer Hope For The Future

By Ruth Carter


During the past few decades, astonishing progress has been made in the field of medicine. As recent as the early nineteen hundreds, for example, people often died due to infections that can now be treated with antibiotics. Many other diseases that used to be a certain death sentence can now be cured or at least managed. Huge amounts are still spent on ongoing research to find cures for many different diseases. Stem cell therapy centers, for example, may just make breakthroughs that would truly astonish the world.

Bone marrow transplants have been around for longer than thirty years. Up to now, this type of treatment were limited to patients suffering from diseases of the blood, such as leukaemia and lymphoma. Patients that receive chemotherapy often lack enough healthy cells and bone marrow transplants can encourage the body to produce new and healthy cells to replace the ones killed by the chemotherapy. It also helps to strengthen the immune system.

Bone marrow transplants may not be a cure for patients with cancer, but there is ample proof that it adds years to their life expectancy. Researchers hope that this form of treatment will become a cure, not just for cancer but also for many other medical conditions. Progress is made steadily, but it is a long and difficult road until a stage will be reached where more advanced tests can be performed on human patients.

One major focus area of researchers is diseases that cause the brain to degenerate, such as Parkinson and Alzheimer. They believe that this treatment will eventually be able to reverse brain damage caused by these diseases, strokes, severe injuries to the spine and physical brain injuries. This will give numerous people a new lease on life and make a vast impact of the quality of life of patients that have no options at present.

It is also possible that many different types of heart diseases will be treated by means of transplants. As it is, heart disease is rampant in most developed countries. Researchers believe that damaged cells and blood vessels inside the heart can be replaced by new and healthy cells and vessels. If this becomes a reality, it will mean a major step forward and new hope for millions of patients.

Bone marrow transplants have numerous enemies. They say that this treatment method will almost certainly lead to unethical behaviour by medical practitioners. This is because it is not always the marrow that is used during transplants. The blood from the umbilical cords of unborn babies can also be used. Critics also say that, at present, the risk involved in bone marrow transplants are unacceptably high and that many patients die.

Many highly regarded critics are of the opinion that researchers in this field are creating false hope by misleading the general public about current progress. They do this to secure more funds for research and to keep a healthy interest in this topic alive. Facilities offering this treatment are nothing but profit centres, critics say, and patients do not understand the extremely high risk of undergoing bone marrow transplants.

Researchers agree that there is still an enormous amount of work to be done before bone marrow transplants can become commonplace. They are adamant, however, that this type of treatment will become one of the biggest breakthroughs the medical field has ever see. One hope that they are right.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment

GoogleAnalytics