Stem-cell treatments are in the news again this week. However, it’s for the wrong reasons this time.

The Department of Public Health Sciences and Faculty of Law at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada has carried out some research looking at private clinics offering stem cell treatments for many diseases, particularly neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, spinal cord injuries and Multiple Sclerosis; and more bizarrely, autism, muscular dystrophy and cerebral palsy.

The researchers looked specifically at clinics offering such treatments online via their websites and looked at the sort of treatments being offered, the claims made for them and whether there’s any clinical evidence to support these claims.

In our article on pseudoscience, we said one characteristic of pseudosciences is that they are often aimed directly at the public:

Scientific breakthroughs will normally have been published in science journals, scrutinised by other scientists, and only announced to the public once scientists have agreed that the scientific breakthrough is indeed genuine. The progress of the acceptance of the idea will be documented and anyone can reference this information in the relevant journals.

Pseudoscientific ideas are sometimes driven by cultural or ideological reasons, but very often they’re driven by commercial goals. A company that is trying to sell its products or ideas without having gone through this scientific scrutiny is giving out a telltale sign that their products will not stand up to scientific scrutiny. A new ‘miracle breakthrough’ healing device, for example, that is being sold directly to the public, but which has no science references to support it, probably doesn’t work.

These stem-cell therapies are being marketed directly to the public precisely in this “direct-to-consumer” manner.

Not surprisingly, when the researchers looked for clinical evidence in the PUBMED database to support the therapies these clinics were selling direct to consumers, the particular conditions that are being treated by these clinics are not backed up by clinical evidence.

Not only that, most of the clinics’ websites that were looked at made no mention of any side effects or risk factors involved with these treatments.

Conclusion

There is certainly a feel-good factor and optimism involved with stem-cell treatments because of the potential and hope these therapies may offer in the future; and this is augmented by success stories like the trachea transplant mentioned earlier. This is all the beginning however; the potential to cure many diseases using cell-stem therapy lies in the future.

The clinics currently offering these stem-cell therapies for various neurological disorders are riding on the back of the optimism, hope, and positive press it gets, but they are clearly making false claims for the efficacy of these treatments as the claims are not backed up by clinical evidence.

In summary we have:

• Claims of cures for treatments that are not supported by evidence;
• Omission of the associated side effects or risk factors involved; and
• High cost of treatment to the consumer: the average cost for these treatments is ~ £14,670 ($21,500 or €16,800).

As is usual, these treatments are not illegal. So it is again a case of buyer beware. Just as with many more obvious forms of quackery, these clinics are selling nothing more than false hope – which is particularly repugnant as they are hitting people who are vulnerable, and they surely know what they are doing.

The general advice to people contemplating stem-cell therapy offered by a private clinic is to keep well away. The technology is not yet advanced enough to cure the conditions that these clinics claim it can.