Treatment of Cerebral Palsy with Stem Cells: A Report of 17 Cases

ABSTRACT

Cerebral Palsy (CP) is a disabling condition that affects a child's life and his/her family irreversibly. It is usually a non-progressive condition but improvement over time is rarely seen. The condition can be due to prenatal hypoxia, metabolic, genetic, infectious, traumatic or other causes. It is therefore a heterogeneous group that results in functional motor disability associated with different degrees of cognitive abnormalities. There are no treatments that can cure or even improve CP and the best available approach aims at functional, social and nutritional supportive care and counseling. In this paper, we report 17 sequential patients with CP treated with intrathecal administration of Bone Marrow Mononuclear Cells (BMMC). All patients had an uneventful post-injection course with 73% of the evaluable patients treated having a good response using the Gross Motor Function Classification System (GMFCS). The average improvement was 1.3 levels on the GMFCS with cognitive improvements as well.