Stem Cells Save Another Lupus Patient Once Near Death, Young Woman Now Well and Off Drugs

WebMD Medical News

By Daniel DeNoon

July 05, 2002

The 18-year-old woman was so near death from lupus that she needed life support. Her lungs and kidneys were failing. Now -- nearly two years later -- she is in good health with no sign of the disease that nearly killed her.

What happened? The young woman became one of a handful of lupus patients to undergo a stem-cell treatment that may cure the disease.

"Complete clinical remission of the [lupus] was achieved, which has been sustained for 21 months," write Martin Brunner, MD, and colleagues from the University of Vienna, Austria. Their report appears in the June issue of the journal Arthritis & Rheumatism.

Lupus is an autoimmune disease. That's an illness in which the immune system turns its powerful germ-fighting weapons against the body itself. Nine out of 10 cases occur in women. Treatment can be very successful, particularly if the disease is caught early. In the decade 1979-1998, there were 22,861 U.S. deaths due to lupus -- more than a third of them among people aged 15 to 44.

The transplant procedure is still experimental. It's no walk in the park -- especially for people who are very ill. Patients first receive treatment with a powerful immune-suppressing drug to put their disease into temporary remission. Patients then get a treatment that makes their bone marrow produce stem cells, and these cells must be collected in a process that takes three or four days. When these naive cells have been stored safely in a freezer, the patients undergo high-dose chemotherapy to clear the way for the stem-cell transplant. They also get a horse serum that kills off T cells, a crucial part of the immune system. Finally, the stored stem cells are thawed, heated to body temperature, and transfused back to the patient.