Crohn’s disease is an inflammatory bowel disease caused by an abnormality in the functioning of the immune system and the accumulation of white blood cells in the intestinal tract. As a result auto-antibodies attack the lining of the gut resulting in chronic inflammation, swelling, bleeding. Patients complain of loss of appetite, malnutrition and weight loss, diarrhea, abdominal cramps, mucus and blood in the stool leading to anemia. The disease evolves overtime with symptom-free periods of remission alternating with episodes of recurrence of acute symptoms and relapses. This changing of pattern varies in degree from patient to patient. Estimates of 500,000 Americans are diagnosed with Crohn’s disease.
The goals of the treatment are to decrease the inflammatory process, control the symptoms and correct the nutritional deficiencies. Until now, with the use of specific restricted diets, combined with strong drugs that aim at suppressing the body immune function, physicians were only able to control the disease and limit the number and the intensity of the relapses; this was certainly not seen as potential cure.
Recent studies shows that stem cell therapy may play an important role in the future for the treatment of Crohn’s disease by offering a way to reset the immune system to a more normal function, thus decreasing the inflammatory process in the bowel and repairing and replacing damaged intestinal linings. Preliminary results show that both allogenic stem cells (from umbilical cord) and autologous stem cells extracted from the patient’s own peripheral blood or bone marrow could be effective treatment for refractory Crohns’ disease.
Cellulogix offers cell therapy for Crohn’s disease that includes both umbilical cord blood stem cell treatment and/ or stem cell aphaeresis with the use of your own stem cells collected from your peripheral blood.
In addition, our cell therapy is combined with a holistic comprehensive approach of the disease process. The entire treatment takes five days to complete. Our program includes lifestyle and diet recommendations as well as personalized natural supplements prescription for gastrointestinal tract repair and immune system support.
Patients are followed up at regular intervals, post stem cell therapy to monitor their progress.