In Hope for Huntington’s Disease, Neurons Transplanted; Mom Gives Nerves to Baby
News of transplants involving neurons and nerves has been reported recently.
* Transplanted fetal neurons have been shown to take root in a patient with Huntington's disease. Fetal neurons have more commonly been transplanted into patients with Parkinson's disease. Human fetal neurons from nine-week-old fetuses were sown into the brain of seven patients with Huntington's disease at the University of South Florida. When one of the patients, a 54-year-old man, died of a heart attack 18 months later, researchers at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, discovered that most of the implants had taken root. It was not clear whether the cells had formed connections or whether they improved the patient's functioning. However, the transplanted cells "appeared to be untouched by the cellular destruction raging around them," said a statement from McLean Hospital. The hospital said the research was scheduled to be published on December 5 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (www.pnas.org). Lead authors are Francesca Cicchetti, PhD, of McLean's Neuroregeneration Laboratory and Thomas Freeman of the University of South Florida.
* Similarly, a preliminary report published on the website of The Lancet (www.thelancet.com) said that researchers in France had transplanted healthy brain cells from 7- to 9-week-old fetuses into the brains of five people with mild to moderate Huntington's disease. A year later, three of the patients had improved motor and cognitive function. Although the number of patients was small, The Lancet said in a commentary that the findings "are important because they provide the first evidence that intrastriatal grafts of tissue taken from the human fetal striatum can survive and induce measurable functional improvement in patients with Huntington's disease." The study was scheduled for publication in the print edition of The Lancet on December 9. Read the study
. Read the study at
www.thelancet.com/journal/vol356/iss9245/full/llan.356.9245.original_research.14456.1
and the commentary at
www.thelancet.com/journal/vol356/iss9245/full/llan.356.9245.editorial_and_review.14455.1
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* News services reported in late November that doctors at Memorial Hermann Children's Hospital in Houston transplanted about 35 inches of leg nerves from a mother to the left arm of her 8-month-old baby. A brachial plexus injury had reportedly left the boy with severe nerve damage. Reuters news service quoted surgeon Scott Gruber, MD, PhD, as saying that this procedure marks the first time a nerve transplant has been performed using nerves from a living donor. It could take up to a year before feeling and movement are regenerated in the baby's arm.
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