Improved Quality of Life in A Case of Cerebral Palsy After Bone Marrow Mononuclear Cell Transplantation

Cerebral palsy (cp) is a non progressive, demyelinating disorder that affects a child’sdevelopment and posture and may be associated with sensation, cognition, communicationand perception abnormalities. in cp, cerebral white matter is injured resulting inthe loss of oligodendrocytes. this causes damage to the myelin and disruption of nerveconduction. cell therapy is being explored as an alternate therapeutic strategy as thereis no treatment currently available for cp. to study the benefits of this treatment we haveadministered autologous bone marrow mononuclear cells (bmmncs) to a 12-year-oldcp case. he was clinically re-evaluated after six months and found to demonstratepositive clinical and functional outcomes. his trunk strength, upper limb control, handfunctions, walking stability, balance, posture and coordination improved. his ability toperform activities of daily living improved. on repeating the functional independencemeasure (fim), the score increased from 90 to 113. a repeat positron emission tomography-computed tomography (pet-ct) scan of the brain six months after interventionshowed progression of the mean standard deviation values towards normalization whichcorrelated to the functional changes. at one year, all clinical improvements have remained.this indicated that cell transplantation may improve quality of life and have apotential for treatment of cp.