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People once dependent on wheelchairs after having a stroke are walking again since receiving injections of stem cells into their brains. Participants in the small trial also saw improvements in their speech and arm movements.
“One 71-year-old woman could only move her left thumb at the start of the trial,” says Gary Steinberg, a neurosurgeon at Stanford University who performed the procedure on some of the 18 participants. “She can now walk and lift her arm above her head.”
Run by SanBio of Mountain View, California, this trial is the second to test whether stem cell injections into patients’ brains can help ease disabilities resulting from stroke. Patients in the first, carried out by UK company ReNeuron, also showed measurable reductions in disability a year after receiving their injections and beyond.
All patients in the latest trial showed improvements. Their scores on a 100-point scale for evaluating mobility – with 100 being completely mobile – improved on average by 11.4 points, a margin considered to be clinically meaningful for patients.
Read full, original post: Stem cell brain injections let people walk again after stroke
