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A man with Parkinson's disease has been cured in a breakthrough that offers hope to millions of people worldwide, it was revealed yesterday. The disease was gone within a month, and 18 months later the patient was still symptom-free and medication-free, despite having suffered Parkinson's for 15 years. The illness was reversed using cells taken from the American man's own brain, which were treated in the laboratory then returned to his brain. Doctors are impressed with the results, but warn that large-scale clinical trials are needed to verify the one-off cure. The breakthrough, which raises hope for millions of sufferers, including an estimated 50,000 in Australia, was revealed yesterday by the Spinal Cord Society. The society, which helped fund the research, also revealed the treatment secured the approval of the influential US Food and Drug Administration in mid-2000, giving the green light for large-scale human trials. The man was treated at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre's Neurofunctional Surgery Centre in Los Angeles, by neurosurgeon Dr Michel Levesque. The cure also raises hopes for treatments to reverse damage caused by spinal cord injuries as well as stroke and epilepsy. Spinal Cord Society of Australia president George Owen said it was unknown when large-scale human trials would begin. ``There is still work to do, but the facts are that one man has had his own cells put back and within a month lost all his symptoms, and he's been off his medication for 18 months,'' said Mr Owen, a Victorian surgeon. ``That's an absolutely brilliant outcome. Now we need to repeat this on other patients so it can become a mainstream treatment for Parkinson's. ``One of the downsides is this requires a brain biopsy, and that is not without its risks. There's a 1 per cent mortality rate. ``But these people are desperate. People are dying of this disease.'' The cells harvested from the patient's brain are stem cells, premature cells which can be made to grow into any type of cell. Scientists stimulate these stem cells to become dopamine-producing cells, which are the brain cells destroyed in patients with Parkinson's. Millions of these cells are grown and then returned to the patient's brain, replacing cells destroyed by the disease and thereby reversing the illness. The treatment must pass large clinical trials before it will be widely available. It is hoped Australian patients could be included in trials. Actor Michael J. Fox's much-publicised battle with Parkinson's has raised the disease's profile and hastened the race for a cure.