Stem cell treatment

[rightside]

Hi

I just recently came upon this site. At the minute I'm looking into stem cell research treatments for CP and am wondering if anyone on here has any experience of them? In particular places like the Beijing Tiantan Puhua hospital in China seem to suggest they are making great inroads into treatments.

However, my natural scepticism is coming to the fore and while I can see the good news stories of some patients I wonder if anyone has any bad news stories? I am a 32 year old male who has mild right hemiplegia since birth. I've always held out hope that a treatment may be found but am reluctant to spend $40k on a treatment without doing plenty of due diligence on it!

Any comments would be great.

[sarahsmom]

Hello. I too looked at this place for my daughter and with the help of her doctors we decided that this was NOT worth it. First in China (sorry I did spend a lot of time researching this...months actually) they use donated stem cells. You don't know where they came from and for your body to be able to use them, they pretty much have to strip your immune system. Even then, you run the risk of your body rejecting the cells or the donor stem cells attacking your body (called graft verus host). For our daughter, we felt that there was just too much risk. However, we found a place in Germany called the X-cell center which uses a person's own stem cells (from the hip bone) to do the procedure. This means no risk of rejection (since its from your own body) and no need to strip the immune system. Hope this helps!