Stem Cells: Healing Chronic Skin Problems
While many people dread working out, Julian Smith cherishes every step he takes.
"It's just really hard for me to do anything," he says -- hard because Smith suffers from scleroderma. His body is turning on itself -- attacking connective tissue throughout the skin and organs, causing pain, inflammation, and hardened skin. It could lead to failure of his lungs, kidneys and other organs.
Smith is one of 100,000 Americans suffer from the disease. It's so painful it can disable ... and even kill them. "A bad day is typically just not being able to get out of bed, [with] no energy," he says.
Duke University Medical Center Oncologist Keith Sullivan, M.D., is hoping Smith won't have any more bad days after an adult stem cell transplant.
"Our goal is to, in fact, reset the immune system back to normal so the autoimmune disease may be stabilized," Dr. Sullivan tells Ivanhoe.
During the process, doctors create a new immune system. They take out stem cells, erase the disease, and put the clean stem cells back in the patient. Because it's their own cells, there's no risk for rejection. Dr. Sullivan says it not only stops the disease, it reverses the symptoms. "The first thing that many notice is that the intense pain they had in their skin starts abating," he says.
To create a new immune system, doctors must first destroy the old one and rebuild it, putting patients at risk for infection. Dr. Sullivan says, "When the immune system is reborn in this way, the blood counts go down for a period of several weeks and then they recover."
Success with the stem cell transplant for scleroderma could lead to treatment for 80 other autoimmune diseases, which affect more than 20 million Americans. Duke University Medical Center and other centers participating in the study are currently looking for scleroderma patients to take part in a long-term trial.
