Saturday 17 February 2018

Stem Cell Therapy Centers May One Day Save Many Lives

By Ruth Carter


In developed countries, people live much longer than a hundred years ago. This is largely due to the amazing progress that was made in the treatment and management of a wide variety of diseases that used to be death sentence. With massive research efforts continuing all over the world, more and more diseases will be conquered and more and more patients will survive dread diseases. Stem cell therapy centers offer particularly high hopes for new revolutionary treatment methods.

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.

Because bone marrow transplants promote the growth of new, healthy cells, it is hoped that they will one day be effective in treating debilitating brain degeneration diseases such as Parkinson and Alzheimer. It would also be used to reverse the damage done by strokes. It is believed that transplants will even be considered to treat brain damage and physical injuries to the spine.

Another possible application of these transplants is the treatment of a variety of heart diseases, currently one of the most common health problems in developed countries. Eventually, bone marrow transplants will cause damaged heart muscles to be replaced by the growth of new cells and blood vessels inside the heart. Sadly, this promising use of bone marrow transplants are still far into the future.

Not everyone is excited about the potential benefits of bone marrow transplants. Critics are convinced that the risks are simply too high and that too many patients will die. They also point out that the umbilical blood from unborn babies is already used in the place of actual bone marrow. This will lead to greed, unethical medical practices and moral dilemmas for which the world is not ready.

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.

If researchers are to be believed, mankind is on the verge of conquering many diseases. This will certainly improve the quality of life for millions for people. One can only hope that current research delivers on the promises of the research teams.




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