(ANSA) - Milan, January 27 - A bone-marrow transplant using
stem cells to cure a grave autoimmune illness has been performed
in Milan "for the first time in the world, and with promising
results," the San Raffaele hospital said Monday.
With the help of a donor, doctors said they were able to
effectively treat Neuromyelitis optica (NMO), also known as
Devic's disease, which causes the immune system to attack the
optic nerve and the spinal cord, leading to rapid disabilities.
After the transplant, "the illness was halted, the
neurological deficits were partially reversed, and after two
years there isn't one sign of relapse," said a statement from
the team led by Fabio Ciceri at the department of neurology.
The rare disease strikes fewer than one in 100,000 people.
For now the treatment is limited to a small number of
patients as it undergoes further trials.
"This research suggests that in the future, such
transplants can be an effective strategy against forms of the
disease that do not respond to other treatments," doctors said.