UPDATED 23 December 2022

Two conflicting studies about HSCT and progressive MS have surfaced in the last two months. The first was an apropos article from Tomas Kalincik, PhD, of the Royal Melbourne Hospital in Australia in a late-breaking presentation at the 2022 meeting of the European Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis (ECTRIMS). The second was by Matilde Inglese, MD, PhD, study author and professor of neurology at the University of Genoa, in Italy, which was published in Neurology on December 21, 2022.

Dr. Kalinck's Study

The presentation was regarding AHSCT and Progressive MS. Kalinick's findings have long since been suspected, yet there are defintely some high-profile cases which contradict this new research. My mentor, George Goss, mentioned througout this blog, is one of them. Without George's detailed documentation of his experience, I might have not undergone my own such treatment. (My diagnosis at the time of my procedure was Relapsing MS.)

FROM: https://www.medpagetoday.com/meetingcoverage/ectrims/101495

New Evidence Sheds Light on Stem Cell Transplantation for Progressive MS

— Disability, relapses no better than disease-modifying drug

by Judy George, Deputy Managing Editor, MedPage Today  October 30, 2022

"Autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (AHSCT) was not superior in preventing relapses or reducing disability progression compared with natalizumab (Tysabri) in progressive multiple sclerosis (MS), new research suggested."

Dr. Inglese's Contradicting Study

Dr. Inglese found the exact opposite results for patients with SPMS. The majority of the patients with similar disease progress and symptoms actually fared better with HSCT than they did with DMTs. As summarized by MS News Today:

"More transplant recipients also experienced clinical improvements that were sustained after three and five years. After 10 years, disability scores improved slightly for transplanted patients compared with worse scores for patients on medications." 

Matilde Inglese, MD, PhD, commented:

“Our results are encouraging, because while current treatments for secondary progressive MS have modest or small benefits, our study found stem cell transplants may not only delay disability longer than many other MS medications, they may also provide a slight improvement in symptoms.”

Read about her article in Neurology: https://n.neurology.org/content/early/2022/12/21/WNL.0000000000206750

Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation in People With Active Secondary Progressive Multiple Sclerosis

I've been getting nudged to update this blog. I realize that I've been silent to an almost negligent degree. So sorry about that. I've been trying to move on from being "the guy who did the bone marrow transplant" to just being more of just some "guy."

Eight years ago, I saw myself as "the guy whose whole life changed due to a sudden medical problem." I bumped around for almost two years, constantly worsening until I was finally diagnosed with MS. Before the diagnosis, I surely thought I was going to soon die. When I was diagnosed, I had no idea what MS was, but at least I had new hope because now doctors could treat me, and hell, I had modern medicine to cure me. That new hope didn't last too long. Now I was being bounced around from drug to drug with little improvement. I thought now I was going to be kept alive longer while I continued to suffer.

Then I found HSCT as a real, potential solution. I had new hope. My title changed to "the guy who was going to go overseas to get a non-FDA-approved, experimental stem cell transplant." I held that title for only three months until for a month I became "the guy who's in Mexico getting a non-FDA-approved stem cell transplant." People made up their own reasons why the FDA hadn't approved this procedure. The most common misinformation I heard was that it was a moral issue due to the killing of a fetus or something like that. In the meantime, I suffered. I had to explain that my transplant was autologous, and it was still experimental because of the mortality risk.

Updated March 31, 2018.

MS stands for Multiple Sclerosis, which basically means "many scars." The scars develop in the central nervous system (CNS), composed of the brain and spinal cord, as the result of an attack from the body's own immune system.

In a normal body, an attack of the CNS would still be a pretty awful thing, but the body would fight the attacking agents, clear away the resulting plaque, then begin to repair the damage. Sclerosis is a type of scar tissue that is atypical of a cleanly healed injury.

In people with MS, the immune system is stuck in fighting mode, commonly thought to be the result of high levels of inflammation in the body. This keeps the CNS stuck in defense mode, preventing normal healing of the damage. The attack is not the result of a typical virus or bacterial infection, it's actually the body's own immune system doing the damage. This process is referred to as "autoimmune" (immune system attacking the self). Dr. Stephen Gundry refers to this process as "friendly fire." There are a hundred or more different autoimmune diseases. Some of the most common ones are Graves' Disease, Hashimoto's Thyroiditis, Lupus, Type 1 Diabetes, Chron's Disease, Rheumatoid Arthritis and Multiple Sclerosis (MS).