Stem cell treatment helped me to walk

Today's article appeared in a local newspaper from the English city of Birmingham. It is a story of a patient undergoing successful stem cell treatment to relieve his symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis.

Due to the lack of availability of adult stem cell treatments in the UK, the patient had to travel to the Netherlands for his treatment. The startling claim is that within a few hours of the injections of stem cells, the patient, Mr Pear, was walking unaided. It's no wonder that Mrs Pear is now urging the British government to begin clinical trials of therapies such as this in the UK.

I'll leave it to the physicans to debate as to how much of the immediate impact of Mr. Pear's treatment was psychological and how much a direct result of the stem cell therapy. The simple fact is that prior to treatment Mr Pear was wheelchair bound or relied on crutches, post-treatment he is walking unaided.

Stem cell treatment helped me to walk

A multiple sclerosis sufferer who received pioneering stem cell treatment in Holland told yesterday how he can now walk unaided.

Malcolm Pear, a 51-year-old former chartered accountant who lives in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, decided to opt for the treatment to try to relieve his symptoms from the illness.

The treatment, which cost £14,000, is not available in this country and uses stem cells from otherwise discarded umbilical cords which are injected into the spine.

Within hours Mr Pear, who has suffered from MS for ten years, said he was able to move unaided, despite having once needing elbow crutches to walk.

"I feel fine now. It all seemed so straightforward before the event and when I got there it was just a few injections and an intravenous drip, which put 1.5 million stem cells out into my body without any pain at all.

"I can walk around relatively well, whereas before I was in a wheelchair and on crutches, so from that point of view it has been a very dramatic improvement.

"Everyone keeps telling me how well I look and you get quite a buzz from that, so I am excited about how things are going."

Mr Pear criticised the lack of stem cell treatment in the UK.

"The treatment is not just for MS sufferers," he said. "There are about 80,000 sufferers in this country but there are so many other diseases.

"It is horrible that nothing can be done for people because there is not enough money."

Mr Pear's wife Lesley said she was thrilled by the treatment, which she said had returned the man she had married to her.

Since their arrival back in the country, Mrs Pear has answered a number of phone calls from well wishers and people wanting to know more about the treatment.

She said: "It's just been extraordinary. Malcolm got up out of his wheelchair, sat up bolt upright and walked around. He is now walking around the park with the dog.

"His memory is wonderful, he is taking responsibility for his own actions and going to the doctor.

"I am really thrilled, over the moon. Apart from all of these phone calls from all over the world, I feel quite redundant. I am not having to be as concerned that he is going to be walking and falling over.

"The change in him has been so immediate. He has had a couple of days where he has not been feeling quite as good but he is doing a lot more than he was.

"I have just seen him carrying his own drink into a room, something he would never have been able to do before the stem cell treatment.

"He actually remembered something the other day which I had forgotten."

Mrs Pear said she felt the NHS should at least test the treatment before saying it would give other patients false hope.

"I still strongly believe that they should at least be trialing it in this country. I have spoken to upwards of 80 people in the last three weeks who said they would be only too happy to put themselves up for trial."