Sickle Cell Can Be Cured Using This........

Physicians at UI Health advanced this research in phase 1 and 2, where 92 percent of those treated were cured of the disease.


Finding cures that go beyond treatment to improve quality of life is crucial for many different reasons.

Right now, sickle cell disease, a genetic disorder, affects one in every 500 African-Americans in the United States.

The disorder causes red blood cells to become misshapen, taking on a sickle-like appearance as opposed to the circular shape of a healthy cell.

As a result, red blood cells, which are essential in carrying oxygen, can get caught on one another, especially while passing through smaller blood vessels.

When this happens, the oxygen cannot be delivered to body tissues, resulting in pain, organ damage, and possibly stroke.

Doctors have long known that bone marrow transplants offer the possibility to cure sickle cell disease.

But when adults receive these transplants, they also need to undergo high-dose chemotherapy to prevent their own cells from growing back, as well as keeping the immune system from attacking the new cells. Chemotherapy isn’t necessary with this new treatment, however, making it suitable for patients who couldn’t risk undergoing chemo.

“Adults with sickle cell disease are now living on average until about age 50, with blood transfusions and drugs to help with pain crises, but their quality of life can be very low,” Dr. Damiano Rondelli, chief of hematology/oncology at UI Health, said in a press release.

“Now with this chemotherapy-free transplant, we are curing adults with sickle cell disease, and we see that their quality of life improves vastly within just one month of transplant.”

For this treatment, doctors first administer immunosuppressive drugs to patients in conjunction with a low dose of total-body irradiation to prevent the new cells from being rejected.

Then, donor cells taken from a healthy sibling are given to the patient through a transfusion. These stem cells eventually lead to the production of more healthy cells for the patient.

As a result, symptoms associated with the disorder are often relieved, and patients told to continue taking immunosuppressants for the next year.

For the second phase, researchers gave 13 patients between the ages of 17 and 40 transplants from their sibling. In order to find if the sibling was a close match, researchers tested both the potential donor and the sibling for human leukocyte antigens (HLA) markers found on these cells. To be deemed a match, the donor had to have 10 of the same HLA markers as the patient.

Going beyond the NIH research, the team was even able to transplant cells from a donor into patients who didn’t have the same blood type, but matched for HLA markers.

They also found that none of their patients showed signs of graft-versus-host disease, which results when immune cells from the donor attack the recipient’s cells. CONTINUE READING