Stem cell therapy for thalassemia patients

Exactly 49 days ago, Harshil Nanda was a severely ill thalassemia patient with B positive blood group. Today, he is a healthy infant with A positive blood group and a confirmed evidence of how stem cell transplant can treat thalassemia.

The change in his blood group is in fact proof that Harshil’s procedure, the country’s second stem cell transplant from umbilical cord blood of a stranger child received from a private bank, has worked.

Harshil’s rapid recovery has cheered stem cell industry providing treatment for incurable diseases.
“This means that unrelated umbilical stem cell transplant can be termed as an established treatment.
The first success story was of Rishi, a thalassemia major child from Kutch, who was cured by umbilical cord stem cells transplanted from an unrelated donor as he did not have siblings. Harshil is also the only child of his parents.

“While it took three months in Rishi for the donor blood cells to completely take over and change his blood group, Harshil has recovered within two months,”

For children without siblings and suffering from thalassemia, Aplastic anaemia and similar blood problems, this is good news. The success rate of such transplants is 70 per cent.

Doctors are now poised to perform a third unrelated umbilical cord stem cell transplant. “The third patient is a girl called Zeel, who has got Rs 10 lakh as donation from Bollywood star Ajay Devgan to perform the transplant,”

Modern medicine has done much to treat disease and stem cell therapy is the blessing for people suffering from incurable diseases and help them fight with these life threatening diseases