Parkinson's Disease

Stem Cell Therapy for Parkinson's Disease

Wu Medical Center, Bejing, China

The patient is a 42-year-old male; he was presented with progressive trembling and slow movement for the past 2 years. He was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. The patient was healthy before. He could take care of himself most of the time, but his work and quality of life have been negatively affected by the disease. He took anti-Parkinson's medication regularly, but his condition continued to worsen.

Admission PE: Bp 105/70 mmHg, HR 76/min. The heart, lungs and abdomen are all normal by physical examination. His lower limbs are not swollen. He is alert, speaking competently. His face is stiff and lacks expression. He has obvious aching in his left inner thigh. His memory, cognition and orientation are all ok. The bilateral pupils are equal and round, diameter is about 3.0mm, has good sensitivity response to light, and ocular movement is flexible. The binocular vision is slightly poor. The bilateral grain of the forehead and the naso-labial groove are symmetrical, the condition of the teeth and tongue are good, slight tremor of the lingualis. The bilateral soft palate is normal. His neck is flexible; when the patient shrugs, there is some weakness on the left side. The muscle force of the right limb is 5-degrees, and the muscle force of the left limb is also 5- degrees, holding power is 5-degrees. Both upper limbs have static tremors. The muscular tone of all four limbs has increased. The tendon reflexes of all four limbs are weakened. His bilateral abdominal reflexes can be induced by examination. Hoffmann signs with both sides are negative, jaw reflex of both sides is positive; Babinski signs with both sides are negative. Sensory system is good. There is some uncoordinated movement when attempting to point to his nose with his left hand and then switching to his right hand. The movements of the right side are more coordinated and flexible. He walks slowly and has difficulties standing when he shuts his eyes. Meningeal irritation signs are negative. The patient's Parkinson's UPDERS grade was 38 points when he was admitted.

Examination: MRI (06.10.26) cervical vertebra: 1. cervical vertebra has degenerative process. 2. cervical vertebra C4, 5-C5, 6, C6, 7 have lumbar disc herniation. 3. left foramen arteriae vertebralis is small. MRI (06.11.8) lumbar: 1. L4, 5, L5, 6 lumbar disc slightly herniated and degenerated.MRI(07.5.13)head: no obvious abnormalities.Diagnosis: Parkinson's disease

Therapy objectives: To improve the movement of the patient's limbs, reduce tremors, and improve muscle force. After the treatment, it is expected that the patient's condition will be restored to normal.

Treatment procedure and results:

We gave the patient four mesenchyma stem cells implantation treatments, self stem cells activation treatments and anti-Parkinson's treatment. We eliminated oxyradicals in the patient's brain. The patient received treatments to improve circulation and nourish the neurons, together with daily rehabilitation training to promote the recovery of his motor functions. The patient's condition has shown good improvement: He has rich facial expressions, the strength in his left arm has increased noticeably. The patient's coordination and stability has greatly improved. The muscular tone in his left arm has been restored to normal. He has stated that he can participate in physical activities again and take care of himself. The quality of life and his ability to work has improved markedly. Upon leaving the hospital, the patient's Parkinson's UPDERS grade was 6 points.

Analysis:

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a kind of mesencephalon substantia nigra striatum system degeneration of dopaminergic neurons, resulting in the reduced secretion of the neurotransmitter dopamine. The patient develops a series of extrapyramidal conditions such as static tremors, stiffness in all four limbs, bradykinesia and bodily instability. At present, doctors treat this disease primarily by pharmacological means. Levodopa can improve the patient's clinical symptoms, but this is only one kind of neurotransmitter and cannot stop or reverse the course of the disease. If the patient takes levodopa for a long time, they will present with expiration phenomenon, switching phenomenon and other complications.

The surgical treatment, especially brain depth portion stimulation to treat PD also has certain effects. But brain depth portion stimulation treatment for autonomic nerve symptoms and cognition disorders has no obvious curative effect, and can cause intracranial hemorrhaging, epilepsy, depression, and other complications.

How to prevent or treat these complications? This is a difficult task for clinicians, and presently they do not have effective measures for preventing these complications. Fundamentally, neither the transmitter replacement therapy nor surgical procedures can improve the brain's environment and cannot increase the number of dopaminergic neurons. In fact, the multi-Parkinson's nerve toxicity and electrode's stimulation will cause the number of nerve cells to decrease further. Therefore seeking one truly effective type of treatment to increase the number of nervous system cells, in order to fight the cause of the disease, is vitally important.

Trauma,poisoning and pathological processes, such as hypoxia-ischemia-induced neuron loss, are irreversible. The embryonic stem cell's pluripotency and the adult stem cell's crosswise differentiation pluripotency have provided a new way of thinking regarding methods to treating Parkinson's disease. Through the transplantation of dopaminergic neurons to substitute metamorphic neurons, we can restore and improve the substantial nigra corpus striatum dopa system's integrity and its functioning. This is a remedial measure which has promising implications for the future. Activation of the patient's own neural stem cells can alleviate the disease. In recent years, we have treated Parkinson's disease by transplanting nerve stem cells and mesenchyma stem cells, obtaining good results. We can control the symptoms and block the progress of the disease.

We can also improve the movement of the limbs, giving the patient a chance to return to a normal quality of life.
 

by Drs. Sherry Xi, Xiaojuan Wang and Like Wu