Unproven stem treatments blinded three women in Florida after they paid $5000 for corrective treatments for age related macular degeneration. Such treatments can be dangerous as the three women found out in the harshest way possible. All three cases were described by Miami University Professor Thomas Albini after he treated the women who narrated their experience. Doctor Albini published the cases in the New England Journal of Medicine where he describes how they lost their eyesight.
Prior to the unproven stem cell treatment, the women had fairly functional vision. However, in order to improve on the same, they underwent a stem cell procedure that required them to receive injections in both eyes. The injections contained a serum prepared from their own fatty tissue. Within 24 hours, one woman suffered from a detached retina while the other two are totally blind. The unfortunate incident even cost them $5000 each pad to the clinic where they underwent their stem cell treatment.
According to Dr. Ajay Kuriyan of the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute at the University of Miami “The patients paid for a procedure that had never been studied in a clinical trial, lacked sufficient safety data, and was performed in both eyes on the same day,".
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Among the trio, two women stated that they had gone to the clinic as their macular degeneration study was listed in a federal database. The clinic had withdrawn the study because of a lack of participants. According to the clinic’s parent company US Stem Cell Inc, its clinics have conducted several successful studies amounting to approximately 7000 where such stem cell procedures were carried out with less than 0.01% negative reactions.
However several reputed Doctors and professors like Doctor Albini and Kuriyan have criticized such unproven treatments. “The procedures were apparently done legally. But the cases are yet another example of clinics cashing in on the magical sound of the term "stem cells", said Dr. George Daley, dean of Harvard Medical School and a true stem cell expert.
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Doctor Albini and his colleagues feel that the incident where unproven stem treatment-blinded three women proves the risks involved from unproven treatments. They also pointed out that there is no FDA regulation for stem cell clinics and neither does a listing of a study on a Federal database guarantee any legitimacy of the process. Dr Albini says that when a person is interested in participating in any clinical study, written documentation should be acquired from the FDA proving the credentials of the study and the doctors involved regardless of it being a stem cell study or not.
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