What is STEM CELL THERAPY?
Stem cell therapy is a medical procedure involving the transplantation of stem cells. These stem cells are harvested from either the patient themselves or a donor, to treat diseases of damaged tissues and organs.
A stem cell transplant replaces unhealthy blood cells with healthy ones taken from blood or bone marrow.
What Are Stem Cells?
Stem cells are the body's raw materials—basically, the building blocks for all other cells with specialized functions. Under the right conditions in the body or a laboratory, stem cells divide to form more cells called daughter cells. No other cell in the body has this unique ability.
You are made up of stem cells, which are unspecialized cells in your body that have the ability to morph into the cells needed for organ growth and repair. Stem cells exist both in embryos and adult cells. A unipotent stem cell is able to differentiate into only one type of cell, while a pluripotent stem cell is able to differentiate into many different types.
When is Stem Cell Therapy Needed/Recommended?
Stem cell transplants are used to repair damaged bone marrow and to replace blood cells that cancer treatment has damaged.
Various other diseases that cause harm or destroy different types of cells in the body are also treated with Stem Cell Therapy.
Conditions That Can be Treated with Stem Cell Therapy:
- Leukaemia: Cancer affecting the white blood cells
- Severe Aplastic Anaemia (Bone Marrow Failure)
- Myeloma: Cancer affecting plasma cells
- Other blood, immune system and metabolic disorders – including Sickle Cell Anaemia, Thalassaemia, Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCID) and Hurler Syndrome.
How is Stem Cell Transplant Done?
When you get a stem cell transplant, the procedure may involve removing healthy stem cells from a donor's blood or bone marrow. This is called an allogeneic transplant. You can also remove your own stem cells at some point in the future, after any damaged cells have been removed. This is called an autologous transplant.
Stages of Stem Cell Therapy:
A stem cell transplant has five stages that help you get better. The steps are:
- Tests to determine your health
- Harvesting stem cells from you or a donor
- Conditioning treatment with chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy to prepare your body for transplantation
- Transplanting the stem cells, and
- Recovery after the transplant.
How to prepare ?
It is recommended that anyone receiving stem cell therapy abstains from using drugs, alcohol, or nicotine because these activities can hinder the healing process. At the very least, refrain from consuming alcohol for 48 hours before the surgery and for 72 hours afterwards.
What to expect?
The process of briefly withdrawing blood from the body, isolating out the stem cells, and then reintroducing the blood to the body is the most typical approach to harvest stem cells. A drug that stimulates the generation of stem cells will be administered for approximately 4 days prior to the procedure to increase the amount of stem cells in the blood.
Conclusion :
The goal of stem cell therapy, also known as regenerative medicine, is to stimulate the body's natural ability to heal damaged, ill, or dysfunctional tissue. It is the following stage in the transplantation of organs, replacing cells with donor organs, which are in short supply.
