Stem Cell Therapy for Lyme Disease?
When the science of stem cell research was first announced, a battle was initiated that continues to rage on. On one side, the “right to life” organization fights for the embryos that are killed to obtain the stem cells. They are joined by humanitarians who argue about the possibility of cloning, and the potential theological questions that challenge the very definition of humanity.
On the other side is the powerful medical community who offer glittering hope for new treatments where none has existed before. Some treatments are already being used successfully for certain types of cancer and birth defects. The speculative areas are en more exciting such as spinal cord injury, burns, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis’s diseases.
For those of us with Lyme disease, especially neurological Lyme disease, we fear to hope, but the stem cell research has made great progress on brain diseases and dysfunction with specific therapies for Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s diseases, and strokes.
However, according to Dr. Burton Goldberg who has traveled to Mexico to learn first-hand some of the discoveries that have been made there outside of the intensely controlled environment of American medical research. (I found some great information at his site: http://www.burtongoldberg.com/)
Announced just recently (December 8, 2008) by Science Daily, a research team led by the La Jolla Institute for Allergy & Immunology, and Albany Medical College has illuminated the important role of natural killer (NK) T cells in Lyme disease, demonstrating that the once little understood white blood cells are central to clearing the bacterial infection, and reducing the intensity and duration of arthritis associated with Lyme disease.
“Our findings are that the NK T cells are critical to preventing the chronic inflammatory infection that causes Lyme arthritis and they participate in clearing the bacteria which cause it,” said Mitchell Kronenberg, Ph.D., the La Jolla Institute’s president & scientific director and co-senior author on the study, which used a mouse model of Lyme disease.
“What this study demonstrates is that NK T cells are an important part of our defense against Lyme disease,” said Timothy J. Sellati, Ph.D., an associate professor at Albany Medical College and co-senior author on the study.
“This offers the possibility that we can exploit that knowledge therapeutically and potentially develop immunological agents that can trigger more NK T cells to aide in fighting this disease.” Sellati added that “NK T cells alone cannot clear Lyme disease, but are a key part of a collective immune defense.”
The study’s findings are outlined in a paper, “NKT cells prevent chronic joint inflammation after infection with Borrelia burgdorferi,” published this week in the online version of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In an earlier study published in Nature Immunology, Kronenberg, Sellati and co-workers had shown that a certain type of fat, found in the membrane of Borrelia burgdorferi triggered an immune response from the NK T cells.
“We had found that if you gave that lipid to mice or humans, it would activate NK T cells,” Kronenberg said. While this suggested the cells might play a significant role in Lyme disease, “We were missing in vivo (in the body) evidence showing that the NK T cells were activated following infection and were important for killing and clearing the Lyme disease bacteria,” he said, noting that the latest study demonstrates this process in an animal. Next step is testing human reaction. Then we will be ready to add the curative stem cells.
Learn how ethical stem cell therapies can be used to treat: ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease), Alzheimer’s Disease, Arthritis, Asthma, Autism, Blindness, Brain Damage, Cardiovascular Disease, Cerebral Palsy, Chronic Fatigue, Congestive Heart Failure, Dementia, Lyme Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Paralysis, Parkinson’s, Stroke and Traumatic Brain Injury. View the free online 8 minute DVD preview or order your copy online now.
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Thanks for visiting again - Please comment on the posts you read - everyone is interested in what you have to say.
June 25th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
That seems too good to be true, don’t you think?
July 14th, 2009 at 9:14 am
i heard that the stem cell therapy really works,would be better if beside this kind of therapy will be consulted an pshysical therapist
September 1st, 2009 at 12:38 am
It is true that embryos need to be sacrifised for stem cell production. However, in view of the greater good of mankind some things have to be accepted in order to pioneer research. Moreover stem cells are very effective in cancer treatment as well.