From USC
Stem cell therapy may offer a better way to treat a devastating disease affecting the immune system, researchers say, after taking key information from lab work in Southern California and seeing it applied to patients in Nanjing. Lupus erythematosus -- which turns the body's defensive mechanisms against itself with bad effects on the skin, kidneys, nervous system and joints -- usually gets treated with immune-suppressing drugs; this leaves patients open to dire infections and organ malfunction. But Southern California researchers noted a kind of stem cells "interplay" in bone marrow with cells affecting the immune system; if these stem cells had defects, a lupus-like disorder developed in rats -- and it abated when healthy stem cells were injected. Which is what Chinese researchers did -- giving four patients healthy stem cells that helped them curb their lupus or reduce their intake of immune-suppressing drugs.
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