The Future May Hold Stem Cell Treatments For Parkinson's Disease
Stem cell treatments for Parkinson’s disease are being conducted in research to study the effects these cells can have on this condition. Parkinson’s disease is a serious neurodegenerative disorder that affects the brain. It causes stiffness, tremors, speech impairments, slow movement and other similar conditions. It’s referred to as being a group of motor system disorders because it affects different parts of the body. Patients with this disease lack dopamine-making neurons in the substantia nigra part of the brain.
Scientists are developing ways to grow the brain cells called neurons by using stem cells in hopes of using them to treat patients with Parkinson’s disease in the future. According to some studies that have been conducted already, stem cells have the ability to reproduce these cells. Stem cell treatments for Parkinson’s disease would involve taking stem cells and growing them into neurons and then transplanting them back into the patient’s brain. Once this has been done they will multiply and replace the missing dopamine-making neurons that cause this disease. As a result, it’s believed it will greatly reduce the symptoms or cure this disease. It’s also believed that these cells would aid in the development of new drugs that could be used to treat a variety of brain diseases, this could include stem cell therapy for Alzheimer's. The problem that researcher’s face so far is that studies show the neurons grown from embryonic stem cells have a tendency of producing cells that form tumors when transplanted in animals.
Another problem they have is that instead of multiplying, these cells tend to die and scientists don’t know why either of these scenarios is happening. Because of human embryonic stem cell research some scientists have switched from using the embryonic stem cells to using neural stem cells and the results are very promising. The neural stem cells only have the potential to develop into nerve cells but the studies conducted with these cells combined with two key proteins produced great results and they didn’t have the same problems as they faced when using the embryonic stem cells. One of these proteins is called Wnt5a and the other is called noggin. Adding these two proteins also produced more DA neurons than what could be produced when they were not used.
The Internet is full of stem cell research articles that will provide you with all types of information on how stem cells are being used to look for treatments for Parkinson’s disease and many other serious diseases and illnesses. There are a number of stem cell research centers who specialize in this type of research and each one of them focuses on specific types of diseases. For example, some of these centers study stem cell treatments for Parkinson’s disease while another may be researching how stem cells can be used for cerebral palsy.
Stem cell treatments for Parkinson’s disease may very well be a possibility in the future but for now, these treatments are limited and they need much more research before they can be used on patients. It’s hoped that one day, after more research has been conducted, that this type of treatments for Parkinson’s disease will be available for human patients and that it can reduce the symptoms or possibly even provide a cure for this disease.
