Girl of four can see for the first time thanks to stem cell treatment in China

[irishspirit]

As children across the world look forward to opening their presents, young Izabelle Evans has already received a precious gift – her sight.

Izabelle, four, had been blind since birth but she can now see thanks to ground-breaking stem cell treatment in China.

Parents James Evans and Hollie McHugh say they will never forget the way they felt when their daughter saw them for the first time and said “Mummy and Daddy”.

Izabelle can now see things 3ft away after the treatment that cost the family £50,000.

Hollie, 24, said: “The results were better than we could ever have dreamed of.

“If you walk past she can see you and say ‘hiya’. It is amazing because doctors here said she couldn’t see anything at all before we went.”

Hollie added: “Because she hasn’t used her eyes before we have to remind her to use them.

“She went back to school and they have seen a difference too.

“She picks things up and holds them close to her face.

“A couple of days after we got back I put the Christmas tree up and she reached out to grab for the lights. Last year she wasn’t even aware we had a Christmas tree. It’s just incredible. I can’t wait for her to open her presents and experience it all for herself.”

Izabelle was born with septo-optic dysplasia – a condition that


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An HIV-positive man who received a stem cell transplant for leukemia has been cured of HIV infection, doctors announced recently.

While the case was first reported at the 2008 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Boston, doctors have now published an updated report in the journal Blood, which affirms extensive testing.

"It is reasonable to conclude that cure of HIV infection has been achieved in this patient," the doctors wrote.

In 2007, Timothy Ray Brown suffered a relapse of leukemia that required a stem cell tranplant. Brown, also known as "Berlin patient," was given stem cells from a donor that lacked the CCR5 receptor, "a condition that is present in less than 1 percent of Caucasians in northern and western Europe," according to London-based AidsMap.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/doctors-hivinfected-man-cured-stem-cell-transplant/

[Banshee]

Posted: 10:37 PM
Last Updated: 6 hours and 11 minutes ago


By MARILYNN MARCHIONE AP Medical Writer
A very unusual blood transplant appears to have cured an American man living in Berlin of infection with the AIDS virus, but doctors say the approach is not practical for wide use. The man, who is in his 40s, had a blood stem cell transplant in 2007 to treat leukemia. His donor not only was a good blood match but also had a gene mutation that confers natural resistance to HIV.

Now, three years later, the recipient shows no signs of leukemia or HIV infection, according to a report in the journal Blood.

"It's an interesting proof-of-concept that with pretty extraordinary measures a patient could be cured of HIV," but it is far too risky to become standard therapy even if matched donors could be found, said Dr. Michael Saag of the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

He is past chairman of the HIV Medicine Association, an organization of doctors who specialize in treating AIDS.

Transplants of bone marrow - or, more commonly these days, of blood stem cells - are done to treat cancer, and their risks in healthy people is unknown. It involves destroying the person's native immune system with powerful drugs and radiation, then replacing it with donor cells to grow a new immune system. Mortality from the procedure or its complications can be 5 percent or more, Saag said.

"We can't really apply this particular approach to healthy individuals because the risk is just too high," especially when drugs can keep HIV in check in most cases, Saag said. Unless someone with HIV also had cancer, a transplant would not likely be considered, he said.

When the Berlin man's case first surfaced two years ago, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the procedure was too expensive and risky to be practical as a cure but that it might give more clues to using gene therapy or other methods to achieve the same result.

(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

[conk]

I remember a story about a fellow that regained his sight, through surgery, after 25 years of blindness. He had the procedure reversed, taking his sight away, after complaining of the intense stimulation and dis-orientation. His brain had forgotten how to see and the newly regained sight was too much for him.