Transplant brings dramatic gains for 2 parkinson's victims
 

From 1987. I wonder what happened to this therapy?

http://www.nytimes.com/1987/04/02/us...s-victims.html

Fascinating stuff, thanks Gerry,

There are so many lost trials,papers and theories I believe a research team devoted to searching and re-evaluating this lost work could be invaluable, creating a central knowledge bank for all to access.

I wonder what type of Parkinson's the subjects had to be so disabled so young.

Nigel

Four-year follow-up of adrenal-to-brain transplants
 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8198466
Arch Neurol. 1994 Jun;51(6):559-63.
Four-year follow-up of adrenal-to-brain transplants in Parkinson's disease.



Abstract

OBJECTIVE:

Evaluate long-term efficacy of autologous adrenal-to-caudate transplants in idiopathic Parkinson's disease refractory to medical treatment.
DESIGN:

Subjects underwent evaluations several times preoperatively on the University of California-Los Angeles Parkinson's Disease Disability Scale and the Hoehn and Yahr stage of disease. Postoperatively, they were also repeatedly rated on the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale.
SETTING:

Clinical visits and surgery took place at the University of California-Los Angeles Center for the Health Sciences.
PATIENTS:

Three men and one woman, ages 44 to 55 years, were followed up for several years preoperatively. At surgery, disease durations ranged from 7 to 16 years. Originally, all patients had a good response to levodopa, but for several years preoperatively, they had had fluctuating responses and a short duration of drug action.
INTERVENTION:

Right adrenalectomy was performed through a midline abdominal incision. Open craniotomy exposed the head of the right caudate into which pieces of adrenal medulla, 1 to 2 mm in size, were implanted.
MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES:

Scores on the three major scales (see "Design") were augmented with the number of hours "off" per day and severity of abnormal involuntary movements. Disease progression of each patient was compared with his own preoperative course and with those of a cohort of patients with Parkinson's disease followed up for 14 years who had received medical treatment without transplant surgery.
RESULTS:

After 4 years, transplants continued to be beneficial to three patients and had been of brief transient benefit to the fourth. The course of disease was more benign postoperatively than preoperatively and was more slowly progressive than that in the cohort.
CONCLUSION:

Improvement was not sufficient to justify adrenal transplants as routine therapy but does point the way to the use of other dopamine tissue transplantation.

So a 75% success rate does not justify further research into the treatment??????

the trials were later found to be unreliable
 

http://practicalneurology.com/2009/04/PN0309_08.php/

CELL TRANSPLANTATION IN PD
The story of transplantation in PD began in April 1987, when Madrazo, et al. published a breathtaking report that two patients with advanced PD had responded dramatically to implantation of autologous adrenal medullary tissue to the non-dominant caudate nucleus.1 Surprisingly, the benefit was bilateral despite the unilateral procedure. Later that year, Lindvall, et al. reported somewhat disappointing results following transplantation of adrenal medullary tissue into the putamen in two PD patients.2 The Madrazo report unleashed a veritable frenzy, as many centers across the world began performing this procedure, using variable methods of patient selection, tissue dissection, preparation, and implantation and post-operative assessment.3-12 No prospective studies employed a sham surgery control, and it only gradually became apparent that clinical effects were less robust and long-lived than initially reported13 and side effects were significant, especially in older subjects.3 Clinical, imaging, and pathological studies showed poor survival and integration of adrenal medullary grafts, and the procedure was abandoned.14-18 One positive outcome of this failed line of research was the development of a systematic evaluation tool for PD surgeries, the Core Assessment Protocol for Intrastriatal Transplantation (CAPIT) in PD.19