Chiara, Damiano’s mother, describes as amazing the results her son has shown after stem cell treatment. That’s why they traveled again 30 hours from Italy to receive it again.
They live in Rome and last February they visited Monterrey for the first time after searching in different parts of the world for autologous stem cell therapies. They found an option for their son at the University Hospital.
Damiano is 4 years old and his mother, Chiara, says that due to a medical error, at birth, her baby was left with severe cerebral palsy and blindness.
“What happened in the next four months (after receiving the treatment) was amazing.” Damiano smiles, before he cried most of the time, “now he laughs, sleeps better and has less difficulty eating and swallowing,” she says.
“Now he can hold his head high, he started to stand with little help and is trying to take his first steps, in the pool when swimming (in his therapy) without help is very fast. His eyes are open and he reacts to the lights ”
Chiara and her husband Andrea were yesterday at the HU because Damiano received the second stem cell therapy. They looked excited. Mom shares that before her son practically did not move.
The boy raised a kilogram and accumulated muscle mass. Chiara shows videos of Damiano where he swims and takes his first steps with help.
“These great improvements in just four months are incredible, that’s why we are here in Monterrey for the second infusion, it is a tiring and expensive trip, but this gave us back the hope we saw lost,” says the mother.
“There were very few side effects after the treatment, only some vomiting.”
The cost of the treatment is 40 thousand pesos since the equipment used in the laboratory is expensive and must be imported. Dozens of patients have been treated; more than half from abroad.
Direct to the brain
This stem cell therapy is the same as that received in the middle of June the baby Víctor Villarreal Reyes, three months old, who was born in Brownsville and was determined terminally ill by American doctors.
The hematologist and member of the National System of Researchers, Consuelo Mancías, who directs this therapy, explains that together with a team of researchers from the Hematology Service of the University began the study in 2009.
Doctors remove the stem cells from the patient’s bone marrow with a special needle through a small puncture. They are then treated in the laboratory and injected into the spinal cord to reach the brain through the cerebrospinal fluid.
“We take the stem cells (of the patient) to be processed in the laboratory and we take away what we do not use from that tissue, which is red blood cells and plasma,” explains Mancias.
“We do a concentrate of white blood cells and a second procedure again under sedation, the patient goes back to the operating room and with a lumbar puncture we inject those cells into the spinal cord.”
Since 2011 this protocol is published on the website www.clinicaltrials.gov of the American Institutes of Health, which opened the doors for patients from the United States, Canada, South America, Italy and Slovakia to come to Monterrey to receive it.
Open to the world
Adriano, another Italian child, has visited four times with his dads Monterrey to receive therapy. His case was published in the newspaper La Provincia di Varese, in his country.
Mancías says that it has been applied mostly to children with cerebral palsy, but also with autism, and in adults with osteoarthrosis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and with diabetic foot. The results, for the most part, have been favorable.
In May of last year, the research was published in the scientific journal Cytotherapy.
“This publication shows the world that it is a safe procedure to carry out, and with this, we prove that we are not doing any harm to the patient and there are positive results,” says the hematologist.
In the arms of his mother, the small Damiano holds only his head, an advance that for his parents means a triumph that will bring them back to Monterrey lands.
