Tag: pluripotent

Autism is today, more clinically referred to as Autism Spectrum Disorder, or ASD, and has been one of the more challenging medical conditions to document and treat. For many centuries, ASD wasn’t even considered a distinct condition and was often misdiagnosed as other conditions entirely, such as some people with ASD being treated for schizophrenia.

The modern approach to ASD is much more flexible, doing away with categorizations or classifications of different types of ASD, and instead, putting those diagnosed on a “spectrum” of different symptoms at different intensities. This way, no one gets put into a classification with recommended treatments that may not be appropriate because they are not finely tuned to individual needs, and instead, try to address categorial requirements.

However, managing ASD continues to be a challenge. There are different ways to approach ASD, including more psychological approaches, such as behavioral therapy, and medications, such as antipsychotics. What there isn’t, with current medical science, is a cure, although stem cell therapy is emerging as a promising new form of treatment. So what is stem cell therapy, and how can it add to the arsenal of ASD treatment?

The Challenge Of ASD

The reason no cure currently exists for ASD is that unlike many illnesses, such as pneumonia, for example, ASD is not a viral or bacteriological infection. In other words, there is no antibiotic, serum, or other treatment that can eliminate an outside agent causing the issue. ASD can be contracted in multiple ways, and even these methods of transmission are still not fully understood.

ASD has a genetic component since parents diagnosed with ASD can give birth to children that are also diagnosed with it. However, ASD also has a prenatal component, where a pregnant woman who contracts an illness during pregnancy, such as rubella, may result in neurological damage to the developing embryo that leads to ASD. There are also theorized to be post-natal factors, though these have yet to be definitively cataloged. What is known, however, is that ASD, once diagnosed, cannot be removed from the patient.

What Stem Cells Do

Stem cell therapy is a relatively new arrival in medical treatment. It uses, as the name suggests, stem cells for treatment. Stem cells are the basic building block of life. If the DNA that comes from the union of the egg and sperm creates the “blueprint” for how to make a human being, the stem cells are the actual materials used to build the person from nothing.

In medical science, stem cells have the nickname “master cell” because they are “pluripotent,” which allows them to do something no other human cell can do. Stem cells start “blank” and can “reprogram” themselves into any cell of the human body. Human cells like skin cells, for example, normally reproduce only new versions of themselves. A heart cell, on the other hand, cannot reproduce at all, and once a heart experiences cellular loss, it can’t grow anymore to replace the lost cells.

Stem cells, on the other hand, are the powerhouse cells that create a human baby. After the sperm has fertilized the egg, the first thing that happens is that more cells are created to create enough “rough material” to grow into a baby. All of those cells are stem cells, and once there are enough of them, the stem cells eventually specialize into the cells that DNA requires, becoming hair cells, eye cells, brain cells, lung cells and others. These pluripotent stem cells are produced in massive quantities by a pregnant mother as a baby grows.

Once the baby is born, however, the need for pluripotent stem cells ceases, and no more are produced. A lesser version of these stem cells is found in all human beings, in the bone marrow, but these cells are limited in their capability, able to become other blood cells, but not every other available cell in the human body.

Stem Cell Therapy & ASD

Stem cell therapy is a recent treatment where harvested stem cells are injected into a patient. If there are affected or damaged neurological cells, the presence of stem cells may repair this damage by forming new, unaffected cells. In children with ASD, this may result in improvements in speech, attention span, or even a reduction in hostility.

However, for stem cell therapy to be effective, stem cells must be compatible with the recipient. This means either using stem cells harvested on request at the birth of the child or using closely related stem cells from the cord blood of a sibling if younger children had stem cells harvested by the ASD patient did not. A final option for harvesting stem cells is to collect them from the bone marrow, but this is a surgical procedure, and thus more invasive.

Stem cell therapy for ASD treatment is not currently available in the United States. The FDA in America authorizes only leukemia treatments using stem cells. Other countries, such as Georgia, do offer stem cell therapy for other disorders, including ASD.

Autism, more accurately referred to as ASD is still not a completely understood medical condition. One of the most challenging things about this condition is that it has such a huge range of different symptoms that for many years, it wasn’t even recognized as a distinct medical disorder. It wasn’t until the 1980s that ASD got its own category in mental health diagnosis. Before that, it was often incorrectly diagnosed as a variation of schizophrenia, which meant that many ASD patients got inadequate treatment.

Today, while we have a better understanding of ASD and its mechanics, our knowledge of this condition is far from complete. ASD can be treated as a mental disorder, but it also has some physical symptoms. While some of ASD’s symptoms can be treated through behavioral therapy, other symptoms may require medication, such as anti-depressants, or even anti-psychotics. And while autism can be a genetic disorder passed down through a family’s genetic line, it can also be caused by pre-natal conditions and even post-natal circumstances.

In other words, autism has many causes, many symptoms, and many approaches for treating it. The only thing that is consistent is that currently, medical science has no cure for it. One recent innovation in medicine, however, is getting promising results, and that is stem cell therapy, but how does it work?

The Promise Of Stem Cells

Stem cells have the medical nickname of “master cells” because they have a unique property that other cells in our body lack. Under normal circumstances, the only way to replace skin cells lost from a cut, or hair cells from shaving is by having the skin, or the hair, reproduce those cells from the same cells. In other words, skin cells can only grow more skin cells; they can’t grow brain or lung cells.

Stem cells, however, can do this. They start as a “blank” that is capable of becoming any cell in the human body. This, as surprising as it may seem, is hardly revolutionary since stem cells are what make it possible for a single, fertilized egg cell to grow into a baby, as cells divide, then ultimately “specialize” into organs like the brain, lungs, and liver. Under ordinary circumstances, however, stem cells are only present in large numbers during the growth of an embryo into a baby. Once we are born, the number of stem cells in our body is dramatically smaller and less versatile.

How Stem Cell Therapy Helps Autism

Stem cell therapy was first discovered as an effective treatment for blood-related cancer, specifically leukemia. Cancer’s primary effect is to cause rogue/mutation reproduction in cells, so that mutant cells eventually outnumber the healthy ones. Stem cell therapy was found to reverse this process, helping blood cells to start reproducing correctly.

For autism, stem cell therapy can transfuse stem cells into the body, and once there, can replace, or stimulate the growth of cells that may be impaired or damaged. If this is occurring with neural or brain cells, then it may mean that nerve or brain operations physically affected by autism, resulting in ASD symptoms, such as hostility, or lack of communicativeness, can be managed and reversed to some degree by the use of stem cell therapy.

How Is Stem Cell Therapy Applied?

There are essentially two different “grades” of stem cells. The best most versatile stem cells referred to as “pluripotent” are the stem cells used during pregnancy. Because these stem cells must be prepared to grow into every conceivable organ, they are the most useful and are available even after birth has occurred, provided that a mother, after delivery, consents to have the stem cells harvested. This is known as “cord blood,” because the area where stem cells are richest is in the umbilical cord.

If stem cells from birth are unavailable, less versatile, but still useful stem cells can be collected from the patient. This is a more protracted process that involves surgery to collect the stem cells from within bone marrow, but it is important to get stem cells biologically compatible with the patient. Any other stem cells will be rejected.

Once an approved supply of stem cells is available for transfusion, the stem cells are delivered intravenously or intrathecally. In the case of intravenous delivery, the bloodstream is used to transport stem cells to their destination, so a needle or IV is used in this method. Intrathecal delivery, which is more common for neural/brain-related stem cell transfusion, requires the spinal cord be used as the main thoroughfare to deliver stem cells. In this case, the stem cells are injected into the spine, from which point they naturally disperse.

It is important to get proper medical consultation before deciding to apply stem cell therapy to an autistic patient. In some cases, behavioral therapy can have much more positive, lifelong impacts for a child, but in other cases, only stem cell therapy may be an effective treatment. Make sure you make an informed choice.