Stem Cell Research Funding Offers Hope Of Cirrhosis Cure – And Much More!Up until recently there has been a discrepancy between the hopes for adult stem research and what it has actually been able to deliver. Stem cell research funding has begun to turn the tide there, thankfully and new developments in adult stem cell research have produced some really promising results in repairing liver damage caused by cirrhosis. Cirrhosis is a serious and life-threatening condition which can be caused by disease but is more commonly a side-effect of chronic alcoholism. It costs hundreds of thousands of pounds each year to treat cirrhosis and up to now, success has been limited. Even the fabled ability of the liver to regenerate itself has, up until now, failed to yield a cure for cirrhosis.
The only real option was seen to be a liver transplant, which is of course a major procedure and there is no guarantee that a compatible liver will be available. Transplants also sentence people to a life of immuno-suppressant drugs too. But now stem cell research funding has changed that. It has offered a real possibility of treating this serious disease more successfully and providing a long-tern cure. It has been proved possible to treat cirrhosis using the stem cells within our own bodies and those extracted from umbilical cord samples. They are being shown to actually rebuild livers and repair the damage within their own bodies. This is a real breakthrough. Stem cell research funding has enabled several trials into using stem cells to repair cirrhosis. The stem cells are harvest painlessly from blood and bone marrow. The bone marrow can be stimulated by inject to produce extra stems cells for this procedure. These extra stem cells are then injected into a blood vessel which leads directly into the liver in this revolutionary stem cell research. Funding has made all that possible and has come from federal, state and private sources. It appears that the bone marrow stem cells know where to latch on to the damaged parts of the liver. Stem cell research funding is now being focused on finding out whether such repairs can be carried out on other commonly damaged parts of the body - for instance the heart and brain. Stem cell research funding has also been focused on finding a cure for spinal cord injuries, too, offering hope to paraplegics and quadriplegics injured in accidents. But the stem cell research funding is in jeopardy as successive presidents, made nervous by moral and religious objections, have limited the stem cell research funding, particularly on embryonic stem cell research. No new embryonic stem cells can be collected and used for federally funded research. It's good then that cures for things such as cirrhosis and spinal cord damage actually depend up research on adult stem cells, which is much less controversial and is still federally funded. |