Stem cell therapy has made a lot of fuss in the medical community. You might have heard big claims like stem cells being used to cure blindness, or other miracle cure stories. While stem cell treatments hold a lot of promise, it is important to be aware that stem cell therapy as a whole is still very new.
That doesn’t mean its potential isn’t extremely exciting. Stem cell treatments are full of potential.
Now, to get to the question everyone’s asking – can stem cell therapy reverse sight loss?
Can Stem Cell Therapy Reverse Sight Loss?
The fast answer is that there’s no conclusive answer. There are clinical trials that are currently hoping to answer this question, but until those clinical studies are released, debated, and tested again by another team (and so on) the official answer is up in the air.
How Could Stem Cell Therapy Potentially Reverse Sight Loss?
If studies conclusively show that stem cell treatments help reverse sight loss, or at least stop it from worsening, you can very likely expect it to eventually become a widely used treatment. Stem cell transplants like bone marrow transplants, are currently used to help treat conditions like leukemia with great success.
That being said, there is a lot of hope. There are some studies that are looking into how stem cell treatments can help those with age-related macular degeneration AMD, retinitis pigmentosa, and even Stargardt disease, which are the leading cause of vision loss as we age.
The theory is that stem cells can replace photoreceptor cells or retinal cells as needed, to help regenerate the eyes or at least stop degradation further.
How do they do this? Let’s get into it:
First Up: What is Stem Cell Therapy?
To understand how stem cell treatments might be used to slow or even reverse the leading cause of vision loss as we age, you first need to understand what are stem cells, and how they work.
Stem cells are precursor cells. The very first versions of our stem cells, known as embryonic stem cells, can become any other cell in the body. This is, naturally, how we develop from a few cells into a whole human being.
Our stem cells start aging as soon as we leave the embryonic state. This doesn’t mean they get “old” but rather they mature, and the potential cells that they can become decreases. When we are fully developed, we have multiple different types of stem cells in our body, and each can turn into a limited number of cells.
Stem cells from bone marrow, for example, can become red or white blood cells, but not nerve cells.
To help with eyesight, we need stem cells that can become retinal cells.
Now, to get cells can do this, we would need either embryonic stem cells (unethical and rare), or induced pluripotent stem cells. Induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS, are adult cells that have been reprogrammed into an embryonic state.
Here at Bioxcellerator, we use the latest treatments in stem cell therapy, so as soon as iPS cells become more widely available and the cost per treatment comes down (currently, it runs into the hundreds of thousands, if not more), we will absolutely look into including it in our treatment offerings.
For now, we source our stem cells from Wharton’s Jelly, which is preferred since it’s the most likely type of donor stem cell to be accepted by a patient’s immune system. This is because these cells don’t have a certain protein that immune systems are prone to attack as a foreign body.
Of course, the only way to guarantee that your immune system doesn’t attack the stem cells are to use your own. This, however, is a very expensive process. To help lower the stem cell therapy cost, we use Wharton’s Jelly stem cells, screen them, purify them, and then store them until you’re ready for them.
Typical Uses for Stem Cell Therapy
What are stem cell injections used for today? The good news is that while reversing vision loss is still a very new area for stem cell therapy, there are many other conditions that are already being treated with stem cell injections.
You can help relieve conditions such as:
- Arthritis
- Slipped discs
- Multiple sclerosis
- Acute injuries
- Inflammation
- And more
The Future of Stem Cell Therapy: Treating the Untreatable
In the future it’s only expected that more conditions will be treated with stem cell therapy. Better yet, stem cell therapy is expected to become FDA approved for more than just treating blood cancers.
Currently, studies and clinical trials are ongoing, but the results look great across the board. Once the cost of induced pluripotent stem cells comes down, then the number of conditions we can treat will only expand.
If you are living with chronic pain today, however, there’s no need to wait. Stem cell therapy can provide those whose only option is pain medication a new avenue for treatment. Though stem cell transplants aren’t FDA-approved for treating issues like arthritis, there is a lot of evidence that they work. The only downside is that you need to pay for them out of pocket.
That’s why we offer payment plans, to put stem cell treatment into the hands of more who need it.
Want to Learn More About How Stem Cell Therapy Can Help You?
While reversing vision loss is still very new, there are many ways that our stem cell therapy can help you today. Just have a look at the locations we cover, and make an appointment at our nearest clinic. We will go through stem cell therapy and how it can help you, specifically. If you are interested in continuing with the therapy, and think it will benefit you and your condition, we can run a full consultation where we take information about your condition, medical history, and general health to help us determine if stem cell transplants would be a good fit for you.
