LifeSiteNews.com

Tuesday November 30, 2004



     

Non-Embryonic Stem Cell Treatment Allows Paralysed Korean Woman to Walk Again

KWANGJU, South Korea, November 30, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A 37-year-old South Korean woman, paralysed 20 years ago as a result of a spinal injury, is walking again. Hers is the first recorded recovery of a spinal injury from the use of stem cells - her doctors used umbilical cord-blood stem cells.

The AFP reported that Hwang Mi-Soon shed tears as she took her first steps before a group of reporters Thursday, using the help of a walker. "This is already a miracle for me," Hwang said. "I never dreamed of getting to my feet again." She stood up out of her wheelchair and shuffled a few paces back and forth.

"We have glimpsed at a silver lining over the horizon," Chosun University medical school professor and researcher Song Chang-Hoon said. The new treatment has yet to be confirmed and duplicated, but may mark a new era in spinal cord injury treatment, he said. "We were all surprised at the fast improvements in the patient."

The AFP also reported that there is rarely any host immune rejection of umbilical cord-derived stem cells, unlike embryonic cells, which may actually form into tumors after being injected.

"It is just one case and we need more experiments, more data," another researcher, Oh Il-Hoon, said. "I believe experts in other countries have been conducting similar experiments and accumulating data before making the results public."

See last week's similar LifeSiteNews.com report:
Non Embryonic Stem Cell Treatment Allows Paralysed Brazilian To Walk, Talk Again
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/nov/04112306.html

tv

Back to Top Back to Top


SHARE THIS STORY: E-mail  Print  Newsvine  Digg  Reddit  Del.icio.us  Facebook



MORE NEWS: LifeSiteNews.com Home Page  Last 10 Days   Archives   Special Reports

Copyright © LifeSiteNews.com. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License. You may republish this article or portions of it without request provided the content is not altered and it is clearly attributed to "LifeSiteNews.com". Any website publishing of complete or large portions of original LifeSiteNews articles MUST additionally include a live link to www.LifeSiteNews.com. The link is not required for excerpts. Republishing of articles on LifeSiteNews.com from other sources as noted is subject to the conditions of those sources.