This article describes a patient by the name of Kim Freeman, who has lived with the disease for 10 years but lupus (SLE*) was taking its toll -attacking all her organ linings- causing her heart and lungs to fail. She seems brave and quite determined (and despite her insurance being unable to cover the costs of treatment) has managed to raise sufficient funds through her own effort plus a little help from her local philanthropists.
Her 5-week treatment involves peripheral blood stem cell mobilization to elicit the generation of new stem cells and immune cells, and to move these new cells from the bone marrow to the bloodstream. These newly generated and disease free stem cells are harvested, processed and banked for a subsequent return in the form of a bone marrow stem cell transplant. Chemotherapy is then administered after the stem cells have been harvested to remove the affected cells from her bloodstream and to wipe out the bone marrow cells to make way for the returning cells (presumably lupus affects the cells later on when they have become mature immune cells). She underwent this procedure on May 9th 2006.
Typical treatments range from drugs and chemotherapy to knock off or sequester the immune cells causing the problem to therapeutic apheresis (blood separation by specialized machine), which removes the cells from the blood circulation. In the worst case scenario where neither of these two techniques work, a stem cell transplant is performed to essentially turn back the bone marrow’s cellular clock to a time before the immune cells developed the wrong function.
In Chicago’s North Western Memorial Hospital, doctors have been steadily refining the protocols of stem cell transplantation for SLE and have successfully treated more than 50 patients. This procedure is still classified as “experimental” as each procedure is tailored to the patient’s given condition at the time and there are no guarantees of success, but for patients who have no other option this may buy them some quality of life back and some hope that their medication and its accompanying side effects can be simultaneously reduced.
It is estimated that 1.5 million Americans suffer from Lupus and I don’t know the figures for Malaysia or Thailand but I know it isn’t rare (but early, accurate diagnosis might still be a problem). At StemLife, we have met quite a number of lupus patients, mostly females in their early twenties whose lives have been almost ruined by the disease and caused grief and constant concern amongst family members.
Most of them seek us out to enquire if a treatment is available to which I’ve responded that the only work I know of is that mentioned in this article in the US. However, I have heard that the Singapore General Hospital has made a decision to treat this condition and have sent doctors to Chicago to learn the procedure. Perhaps these patients will be able to go to nearby Singapore in the near future to have their treatment as the US is awfully far away for these patients to travel.
The article estimates that it will be 6-12 months before we find out if it worked for Kim Freeman, which I hope it does.
If you have lupus and would like to find out about clinical trials for SLE, have a look at their website here.
*SLE = Systemic Lupus Erythmatoses
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