Fetal Stem Cell Transplants Help Huntington’s

Fetal Stem Cell Transplants Help Huntington’s

A news release reports that French researchers have done a small study grafting neural cells from fetus that were electively aborted into the brains of patients with Huntington’s disease. This was a follow-up to an earlier report on the same study, which had looked at the patients after two years. At that point, three had motor and cognitive improvement and two did not. The three patients were examined again and, six years after the procedure, still had improvement. Because Huntington’s is a progressive disease (and invariably fatal), this is not a cure; the neural degeneration eventually continues. But the treatment did provide stability and was essentially remission. A story in The Independent reports that several hundred patients have received the transplant; this was the first long-term study.

The women who donated the fetal tissue were not asked to donate until they had already chosen to have an abortion.