Transplantation of autologous bone marrow stem cells in patients with chronic spinal cord injury
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Stem cells are being investigated by their potential use in regenerative medicine. There is currently a lack of effective clinical therapy for a number conditions, such as severe spinal cord injury (SCI). SCI can lead to chronic paraplegia, considered an irreversible condition. The administration of stem cells has been tested as a potential therapy for SCI. In the present study we evaluated the feasibility, safety and potential efficacy of autologous mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) transplantation in patients with chronic complete SCI. We conducted a phase I/II, non-controlled study in 14 patients of both genders aging between 18-65 years, with ASIA A classified chronic traumatic SCI. Baseline somatosensory evoked potentials (SSEP), spinal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and urodynamics were assessed before and after treatment. Pain rating was performed using the McGill Pain Questionnaire and a visual analogue score scale. Bone marrow-derived MSC were cultured and characterized by flow cytometry, cell differentiation assays and G-band karyotyping, showing morphological and phenotypic characteristics of MSC, as well as genetic stability. MSC were injected directly into the lesion following laminectomy and durotomy. Transplantation of bone marrow derived MSC was an overall safe procedure. All of the patients were discharged within 48 hours after surgery. Only one patient developed a post-operatory complication, evolving a liquoric fistula that was treated by an additional surgical procedure. Nine patients had improvements in urologic function. All patients displayed variable improvements in sensitivity and 8 patients developed lower limbs motor functional gains, principally in the hip flexors. All patients had variable improvements in ASIA global scores. Additionally, 6 patients had changes in the AIS score to grade B and one to grade C. A direct correlation between motor gain and lesion level and an inverse correlation between light touch gain and lesion volume were found 6 months after transplantation. One patient presented changes in SSEP 3 and 6 months after MSC transplantation. Although there is an abundance of studies describing the natural history of neurologic functional gains during the first year post-SCI, there is a lack of data regarding the degree of neurological recovery that may naturally occur during prolonged follow up investigation. In the present study, we enrolled only patients with chronic and complete spinal cord injury (ASIA A) whom had previously been subjected to decompressive surgery and lengthy rehabilitation protocols without acquiring significant motor or sensory gains. Although this was not a controlled study, based on the patient profiles and the expected spontaneous gains, our study showed potential benefits of MSC transplantation treatment, in variable degrees of motor and sensory improvements, clinical pain measures and urodynamics parameters. The use of MSC presents several advantages, such as isolation from bone marrow aspirates and large-scale expansion in cell culture procedures, which are feasible to be performed in autologous transplantations. We conclude that intralesional transplantation of autologous MSC in spinal cord injury patients is safe and feasible, and may provide some progressive benefits. We are currently beginning new clinical trials based on MSC therapy for SCI.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".