Stem cells ‘restore feelings to paralysed patients’

SCIENTISTS claim to have been successful in restoring feeling to patients who had been paralysed for two years or more by harvesting their stem cells and then putting them back into the body.

A team from the University of San Paulo in Brazil, led by Tarciscio Barros, said after treatment 12 out of 30 patients responded to electrical stimulation of their paralysed limbs. But the experiments have raised ethical questions about what is still a developing area of research.

Professor Sam Pfaff, of the Salk Institute of Biological Sciences in California, told Chemistry and Industry Magazine that the source of stem cells from the patient’s own blood was likely to be controversial.