Medical Breakthrough -- Stem Cells Fix Damaged Leg Arteries
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Medical Breakthrough -- Stem Cells Fix Damaged Leg Arteries
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Stem cell research offers hope to a lot of people living with disease.
Stem cell transplants can help fix damaged leg arteries.
The American Heart Association says up to 12-million people have Peripheral Arterial Disease.
It causes severe pain and can lead to gangrene and amputation.
A new treatment could change that.
"The pain was unbearable," says inefred Cooley.
She knows a thing or two about pain.
"For a year or more, I had been getting up at night. It wakes me up and I'd sit on the easy chair and just hold my foot. It was just terrible, terrible pain," she recalls.
Peripheral Arterial Disease was wreaking havoc on her legs. She even developed gangrene in her toes. Dr. Jeffrey Lawson says pain comes as a result of blocked arteries in the legs.
"It's almost if you can imagine traveling on a freeway. Here, where you're on the highway traveling quite briskly, and the freeway hits a block," says Dr. Lawson.
Because her arteries were so damaged, Winefred was not a candidate for standard bypass therapy.
"There's no target vessel below an area of blockage that can be reconstructed," says Dr. Lawson.
Faced with the possibility of amputation, Winefred chose an experimental stem cell treatment.
"We designed a project to take adult stem cells isolated from a patients' own bone marrow and inject them into the leg," Dr. Lawson says.
Twelve weeks later, Winefred's leg shows signs of regenerating blood vessels.
"And now I can sleep the night through. It is unreal. Well, it's just more than I can ask for really," says Winefred.
Two patients have had the treatment at Duke University, and both have shown improvement.
"They feel dramatically better, and both of them still have their feet where they were both candidates for amputation," says Dr. Lawson.
Now Winefred looks forward to the day she can return to her daily walks without pain.
Winefred is back to her daily walks and has very little pain.
For now, the new stem cell therapy is experimental.
Duke University Medical Center hopes to conduct trials and recruit patients from around the country.
For more information, contact Suzanne Finley, the trial coordinator at Duke University edical Center at finle008@mc.duke.edu or call 919-681-6432. |
