Charity warnings over new MS treatment featured on TV documentary
If you're one of the 570 people in Ayrshire living with MS - you may have tuned into a TV documentary last night to hear all about a miracle cure that's being trialled.
Well we've been speaking to the MS Trust about this stem cell therapy and they're warning you to be cautious.
The documentary into the experimental treatment followed 4 people - who had their immune system rebooted to get rid of the symptoms of the condition.
Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a condition that affects the nerves in the brain and spinal cord and affects around 100,000 people in the UK.
A documentary which explores a pioneering treatment, stem cell therapy, which some people believe may halt or even reverse the effects of the condition. It uses high doses of chemotherapy to “knock out” the existing ‘faulty’ cells of the immune system, before rebuilding it, using stem cells taken from the patient’s own blood. This, in effect, gave the immune system a chance to reboot from scratch.
In the mainstream media, stem cell treatment is still often presented as a “miracle cure”. However, the therapy is still very experimental, has significant risks and is not suitable for every person that has MS.
The charity, the MS Trust, anticipate that a lot of people with MS will watch the programme and want more information about the treatment.
The charity enquiry line hears from people who are considering making huge financial investments to travel abroad to receive stem cell treatment that may not be safe and may not be effective for them, in the hopes that this may stop or even reverse the effects of their MS.
But Amy Bowen from the Trust says it's not been tested enough...