Stem cell therapy returns movement to stroke patients

The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis.

People once dependent on wheelchairs after having a stroke are walking again since receiving injections of stem cells into their brains. Participants in the small trial also saw improvements in their speech and arm movements.

“One 71-year-old woman could only move her left thumb at the start of the trial,” says Gary Steinberg, a neurosurgeon at Stanford University who performed the procedure on some of the 18 participants. “She can now walk and lift her arm above her head.”

Run by SanBio of Mountain View, California, this trial is the second to test whether stem cell injections into patients’ brains can help ease disabilities resulting from stroke. Patients in the first, carried out by UK company ReNeuron, also showed measurable reductions in disability a year after receiving their injections and beyond.

Related on the SLP

Should FDA crack down on stem cell clinics? One shot to lower risk of heart attacks? Early-stage CRISPR therapy safely cut “bad” cholesterol and triglycerides by more than 50% patients

Ahead of the midterms, Meta has paid at least 29 anti-LGBTQ accounts for their posts

Viewpoint: RFK Jr.’s stacked FDA advisory council endorses multicancer screening test from ethically- questionable company that would increase false positives and waste billions of dollars

Viewpoint: The price Americans pay for science denialism

All patients in the latest trial showed improvements. Their scores on a 100-point scale for evaluating mobility – with 100 being completely mobile – improved on average by 11.4 points, a margin considered to be clinically meaningful for patients.

Read full, original post: Stem cell brain injections let people walk again after stroke