World's First Multiple Sclerosis Patient Treated with Mesenchymal Stem Cells

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In 2004, Louise was playing a Canadian Women’s Tour event in Nova Scotia, Canada when she felt some tingling in her left thumb and one finger. She felt her strength diminishing in her arm and wondered what was happening. Still, she was mostly fine until January 2007, when she started getting progressively weaker and having balance and endurance problems.
In 2007, Louise Zilstra was diagnosed with rapidly progressive multiple sclerosis.
By early this year she was not only unable to play an 18-hole golf game, but she could barely walk 50 yards.
Louise consulted her Dr. Mark Freedman, an MS specialist from Ottawa, Canada, who recommended her a completely new treatment with Israeli professor Shimon Slavin. Treatment consisted of using their own (auto) mesenchymal stromal cells, taken from their own bone marrow, cultured in the laboratory and then injected intrathecally into the spinal cord.
"Her course is primary progressive and right now we have no sure treatments for primary progressive disease," neurologist Dr. Mark Freedman, an MS specialist at Ottawa Hospital, told CTV News.
Primary progressive MS accounts for between 10 and 15 percent of cases and does not often follow a predictable disease pattern, Freedman said.
Freedman told Zylstra that within two years she would likely end up in a wheelchair.
"It was a disaster," Zylstra told CTV News. "When you think, I might not play golf again and that's what you do, it's like, what am I going to do?"
Eight months after traveling to Israel for the treatment, Louise is back on the golf course.
"It's night and day," Zylstra said. "It's a complete 180 from where I was."
Given the progressive nature of Zylstra's MS, such a recovery would have been highly unlikely without the treatment, Freedman said.
"She's recovered substantial function very quickly," Freedman said. "She's out golfing, and out-golfing most people, which is quite incredible."
Larger, more objective studies must be done to accurately measure the treatment's effectiveness, Slavin said.
The team must also further study the action the mesenchymal cells have on preventing the immune system from attacking nerve cells.
The findings also offer hope that the treatment may help patients with ALS and spinal cord injuries, and even to rejuvenate aging or damaged organs.
"The secret is to do the treatment of choice in the early stages of the disease before irreversible changes occur," Slavin said. Researchers are also testing the technique on a number of other neurodegenerative diseases.
As a result of the treatment, Louise's condition has completely returned to normal!
Learn more about MS Stem Cell Therapy Treatment:
ibiotherapy.co...