What Is Done 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.

Cells are derived from many different sources and some are under serious criticism. Embryonic stem cells form the bulk of all the cells used because they are easier to derive. They get isolated from embryos first before being taken through culturing and preparation procedures to ready them for use. Human cloning and abortion politics are highly stirred by these methods. Other methods include pluripotent stem cells induction and utilization of methods of somatic cell nuclear transfer.

As a result of a lot of criticism in this field, it has become very hard to market treatments that are based on transplant of stored umbilical cord blood. These difficulties and controversies discourage researchers and cause research facilities to shut down due to lack of finances to run them. These are some of the reasons some of the treatments have not been completed yet.

The working of stem cell therapy involves regeneration of cells damaged or lost in affected tissues or organs. Once they are introduced into the body, they cause new cells to be formed by the body. This way, conditions that cause brain degeneration such as Alzheimer disease, Parkinson disease, and amyyotrophic lateral sclerosis can be treated. Similarly, normal body tissues are able to be formed in the place of typical scar tissue, which gets formed on wounds.

Many people without understanding the technicalities of the therapies hold high hopes in them. First, one must know that different functions in the body are done by different kinds of stem cells. Therefore the functions of the cells are limited to specific tasks. Unrelated diseases cannot be treated by the same kind of cells. Tissue specific cells perform only the function they are specialized in or meant for.

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.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment