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Thursday, March 8, 2001 Parkinson's study using fetal cell implants has disastrous results From News Services A carefully controlled study that attempted to treat Parkinson's disease by implanting cells from aborted fetuses into patients' brains not only failed to show an overall benefit but also revealed a disastrous side effect, scientists report. In about 15 percent of patients, the cells apparently grew too well, churning out so much of a chemical that controls movement that the patients writhed uncontrollably. The researchers say there is no way to remove or deactivate the transplanted cells. The results, reported today in the New England Journal of Medicine, are a severe blow to what had been considered a highly promising avenue of research for treating Parkinson's, Alzheimer's disease and other neurological ailments. The study indicates that the simple solution of injecting fetal cells into a patient's brain may not be enough to treat complex diseases involving nerve cells and connections that are poorly understood. The findings also may fuel the debate over whether it is appropriate to use tissue from aborted fetuses to treat diseases. Despite their disappointment, some researchers said they hoped that the results would not halt fetal cell research. The research has been controversial because the fetal cells were obtained from abortion clinics. Parkinson's disease occurs when cells of the substantia nigra in the base of the brain die, for unknown reasons. The hope was that fetal substantia nigra cells might take over for them. But, the study showed that in older patients, the operation had no benefit and that in some younger patients, the transplants brought on nightmarish side effects. Dr. Paul Greene, a neurologist at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons and a researcher in the study, described the uncontrollable movements. "They chew constantly, their fingers go up and down, their wrists flex and distend," he said. And the patients writhe and twist, jerk their heads, fling their arms about. For now, Greene said, his position is clear: "No more fetal transplants. We are absolutely and adamantly convinced that this should be considered for research only. And whether it should be research in people is an open question." Dr. Gerald Fischbach -- who was director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, which sponsored the study, and is now dean of the faculty of medicine at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons -- said that while the operation had been promoted by some neurosurgeons as miraculous, this was the first time it was rigorously evaluated, using sham surgery as a comparison. In the study, researchers, led by Dr. Curt Freed of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver and Dr. Stanley Fahn of Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York, recruited 40 patients, aged 34 to 75, who had had Parkinson's disease for an average of 14 years. The patients were randomly assigned to have fetal substantia nigra cells implanted in their brains or to have sham surgery, for comparison. The uncontrollable movements first emerged a year after the implant, showing up in five of the 10 patients younger than 60 who had at first appeared to benefit from fetal cell surgery -- three who had the operation in the initial phase of the study and two who requested it a year later, when they learned that they had originally had a sham surgery. http://www2.startribune.com/stOnLine/cgi-bin/article?thisStory=83725529 ********