I am 46 years old and had a polio when i was 8-months old. My left leg is affected slightly but as I am aging - it's giving me lots of trouble. Left knee and hip joints have been going weaker inspite of my excersize.
I am wondering if anyone here has tried stem cell therapy to strenthen the muscles and seen the result.
Thanks!
I don’t want to be a wet blanket, or throw a monkey wrench into anyone’s hopes, but we need to be realistic about the potential benefit of stem cell research and post-polio.
Polio is primarily a nerve disease, not a muscle disease. The muscles don’t work because of damage to motor nerves (anterior horn cells).
Let us speculate about a medical breakthrough that will allow stem cells to target anterior horn cells. Anterior horn cells are the primary target of the polio virus. The damage to these areas of the nerve pathway is what causes paralysis in polio.
In our speculation, we can hope for a complete reversal of the anterior horn cell damage that occurred during our polio onset. Now the nerve pathway is complete – your brain sends a signal to your quadriceps muscle, “Straighten my leg!”
But, unfortunately, that poor old quadriceps muscle has atrophied from thirty or forty years of little or no usefulness. No matter how much nerve impulse it receives, it just cannot respond. It is as if the brain has been calling the quadriceps all of these years, but the telephone line was down. Now, through stem cell therapy, the telephone line is back up. But the quadriceps hasn’t heard from the brain for so long that it died from a broken heart. We still can’t bring back the dead.
This answer is too simplistic, and there might be benefits to stem cell therapy at some point in the future. I haven't read any credible articles about successful therapy in post-polio. It is only an educated guess but, if science could target anterior horn cells with stem cell therapy, this would be a possible treatment for patients with recent polio. And any research is beneficial. Often the desired outcome will result in benefit to others, even if the research was not initially in that direction. Does this make sense?
Thanks for the detailed answer! Your response is an education to me about Anterior horn cells, I didn't know these details and always thought that muscles are weak.
It makes total sense. My left leg has full senses of touch, movement and all but as per doctors, knee joints and muscles are too weak to walk on that. Based on this understanding, I was developing hope that stem cell can strenthen these mucles and can help.
and yes, really appreciate your response!
Thank you for taking time to write this.
Richard, In your speculation, by stem cell therapy, you have rewired the anterior horn cells by reversing its damage and these horn cells are not sprouting with its connection to the atrophied muscles.
These muscles can now be trained to rework, although it would take long and with great difficulty, which is better than having no connection at all with dead anterior horn cells. Isn't a possibilty better than no possibility at all ?
The utility of Stem cell therapy in regeneration of dead neurones itself is questionable. However it has created some hope for sufferers of PPS.
There is research being done with Stem Cell therapy,
to replace the dead neurons with new neurons. It is theoretically possible, no longer just a hope.
If I wanted to try this, is it available in the US? If not, is Mexico a safe possibility? Any other place?