Stem cell therapy?

I was wondering if anyone knows anything about this or has had a cat go through it?
My vet suggested stem cell therapy for Sneakers, my senior cat. Sneakers has pretty bad arthritis and also CRF and high blood pressure. My vet said they haven't used stem cell therapy on CRF but have used it for acute kidney failure, so it might help that and it should help her arthritis. My vet's dog and cat both went through it for some joint and other issues and it helped them.
She said there are no side effects.

So I was wondering if anyone has info on this treatment? Should I do it? She said she will email me some more information about it.

Vastly done in Brazil, very successful, especially for CRF. I was not sure why it wasn't done here.... If my vet offered me that, I would certainly do it! Much much better than the intensive Kidney failure and CRF therapies done here. In there, the therapy is done once every 4-6 months or so, by applying the stem cells right into the kidneys by an injection (if I remember correctly). Kitties do really well.... It is also done for Leukemia (the cancer type), arthritis, and some other diseases (forgot). It started by research for humans, but the animals responded SO well, they quickly transferred treatments to veterinary - cats, dogs and horses.
I have seen plenty of info in portuguese, and can try to see tonight in english for you - it is AWESOME to see that this is finally getting in here
PM me to remind me to get this for you

It's still very experimental in humans. I mean, we do use stem cells for bone marrow transplants and such; but for other stuff... honestly, we just don't know. I've heard of stem cell therapy being sold as a quack cure for practically everything, and that's problematic because if we just throw it around like the newest miracle elixir, how will we know what it's actually good for?

I think we need more research before we go applying it to random illnesses. It's just too easy to attribute a natural recovery to a new therapy if you haven't done the statistics on it. It's a promising idea, but let's get the researchers on it to figure out the exact details before we start trying things in such a haphazard and disorganized fashion.

I looked it up and there is research into stem cells helping with arthritis and acute renal failure, and I found some studies about it for CRF too... It's not just using it randomly.

Originally Posted by Callista

I think we need more research before we go applying it to random illnesses. It's just too easy to attribute a natural recovery to a new therapy if you haven't done the statistics on it.

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I don't think my senior cat is going to have a spontaneous recovery from her arthritis or kidney failure. If there is a chance it may help with her arthritis at least, and a possibility it could help her kidneys too, it is definitely something I want to consider.
I was just hoping someone else may have more information or experience.

This is the treatment: http://vivastem.com/index.html

Trying experimental stuff may be worth it, but you have to balance it against the quality of life the animal experiences--would your time at the vet's be better spent hanging out together at home?

I don't like the way they're advertising with testimonials. That has always been a pet peeve of mine; you just can't prove anything with testimonials. They skip the facts and go to the emotions. I'd rather see some solid research.

It doesn't seem like they have that solid research yet. The papers under their "our science" section are all quite general, at least from the titles; not even proof of concept much less clinical trials. Looks like they did stuff with cells in culture, and then experiments with rats... I'm thinking, this is the first stages. It's gonna be ages before they figure this stuff out, and it seems like jumping the gun to be selling it already. For all they know, this is going to be one of the many, many ideas that doesn't pan out. That's part of what science is--you try stuff, as intelligently as you can, until something makes sense. But you have to try a lot of stuff that fails first.

I mean, if you want to give it a shot, go ahead; somebody has to be the first (or, y'know, in the first thousand), and as experimental stuff goes it doesn't seem like it'd be all that dangerous provided it didn't trigger an immune reaction or anything. Still--it's probably going to be a lot of money for something that's still preliminary at best.

Originally Posted by Carolina

Vastly done in Brazil, very successful, especially for CRF. I was not sure why it wasn't done here.... If my vet offered me that, I would certainly do it! Much much better than the intensive Kidney failure and CRF therapies done here. In there, the therapy is done once every 4-6 months or so, by applying the stem cells right into the kidneys by an injection (if I remember correctly). Kitties do really well.... It is also done for Leukemia (the cancer type), arthritis, and some other diseases (forgot). It started by research for humans, but the animals responded SO well, they quickly transferred treatments to veterinary - cats, dogs and horses.

Click to expand...

Very cool, I had no idea that it was commonplace in veterinary practice now in some places. Amazing the medical advances we are seeing in our generation alone.

Definitely exciting and optimistically looking forward to read some more about it. Thanks for sharing.

Originally Posted by Callista

Trying experimental stuff may be worth it, but you have to balance it against the quality of life the animal experiences--would your time at the vet's be better spent hanging out together at home?

Click to expand...

I don't think it takes that long, and she is at the vet pretty often anyway. It is also not as expensive as it sounds.

Here is a perfect example how Brazil is quite advanced on Vet Stem cell therapy.... and how nope, it is not an such a novelty/experimental treatment - and yep, it is very, very effective - this is awesome: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011...h-recovery.php... It is not used everywhere, but research... there is tons of reaserch on stem cell... And let's face it, it all starts on animals before it moves to humans.... That's one advantage for our kiddos. In Brazil, due to be a very religious country, only on the last government Stem-cell research was given a Governmental budget and made ok/official - It was found "Pro-life" by the Supreme Court, as it saves lives - and it is used to save lives - I found that very interesting... and awesome!
But they have been researching veterinarian for a while.... Treating in Universities too. There is a Company even, to make their clinical trials - big, reliable company (Veterinarian Hospital), in the field for 30 yrs, offering free treatments to cats, dogs, and horses so they can not only advance the treatment, but have larger clinical trial basis. They are treating cardiac disease, CRF, arthitis, fractures, tendon ruptures, liver failure, etc. They are finding that the animals that are not cured, require much less treatment than before therapy. The stem-cell they use in there comes from the animals tooth - they can also store it for future use, once they remove them.
Apparently the US has been using in the vet field for a while too, but for horses - that's what I read in the Brazilian literature... It's well used over here.... Haven't seen much talk about other organs/disease, other than arthritis, in the US. Scientists (from here) are partnering with this Veterinarian Hospital overthere and getting to research together, which is a cool collaboration....
Anyways, Nekochan, I am trying to get some stuff in English for you, disease specific...

Don't mean to rain on your parade here, but this is still testimonial evidence--a sample size of just one. You can't even do stats on that. What you get from a single case study like that--or even a collection of similar case studies--is simply, "This is a promising avenue for further research." You can't draw any more conclusions than that, not until you've done some more rigorous work on it.

Not that this means it wouldn't work. It well might; we don't know. But that's the point--we don't know yet. We need to gather more evidence first. With an unproven thing like this, you'd be part of the experiment, and you have to decide if you're okay with that. Weigh the risks, you know? Sometimes the risks are low enough that you can go, "What the heck; let's try it," other times it's a matter of time and money that could be better spent elsewhere; yet other times it's outright dangerous.

I guess I've just seen too many people suffering from trusting in unproven, experimental, or alternative treatments. Most of the time, all that happened was wasting money, but worse things do occasionally happen--as well as better things, as new useful treatments are discovered and become mainstream. You take your chances, I guess.

You think this is the only animal they ever treated overthere? This is the only Wild animal in the World. Ever treated.
This is by no means the only animal... This was one example (and a cool one, at that)... But Gosh, many many many many have been treated in many years. Do you think if they had no experience, hadn't treated an animal before, they would just treat a wild animal just like that.... out of the blue... with stem cell?

Something else I would like to add: I do believe in Stem Cell. I think, I rather know it holds the cure for many diseases. It betters the quality of life tremendously.
I will add though, that I know nothing about the company the OP posted. To date, I hadn't seen Stem Cell done privately - this to me, is serious stuff.
Does it work? SURE it does.
But if someone offers me a syringe saying it is stem cell, I would think twice - (not saying the OP's page is that).
There is a lot involved in it.... removing the stem cells, isolating them, culturing them.... then transplanting them. So.... I am not sure about this specific one.
I believe stem Cell, and if a cat of mine has CRF and I have the opportunity of using it reliably.... I would do so in a heartbeat. But.... This type of things are done usually in Universities and research labs, or at least large hospitals, as they have the structure for it.
My opinion, and what I know of....

We are going to go ahead with it. I think if there is a chance it might help her, it's worth a try since there isn't a lot else that has the potential to actually improve her condition...
My vet said it is generally just done as a regular appointment, but they may keep her for a half day just to be careful and monitor her since has several health issues.

I also uploaded the info my vet emailed me about it, you can see it here but I don't know if you may need to be a member of this Yahoo group to be able to see it:
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/c...iles/VivaStem/

The vet practice where Chumley's holistic vet practices was the first vet hospital on the East Coast to use stem cell therapy. It's standard of care there now for various things (I hadn't asked what, but when we take Flowerbelle in in a couple of weeks, I will). I do know they've seen amazing results.

it helps! Do keep us posed!

Keep us posted!!
@ Laurie, Wonderful to hear!!

Yes I will let you guys know how it goes! She will probably be going in next week some time for the first treatment.

Hey I just wanted to give an update on Sneakers! She is doing well, we just went to the vet today to recheck her blood pressure and bloodwork. Good news! Sneakers blood pressure is down. The vet said her blood pressure is that of a normal stressed cat which is great for Sneakers compared to what it previously was!
Also her weight is up, she is very skinny so any gain is good and they checked her records and said she hasn't weighed this much since November 2010! My vet said that the stem cell treatment is sometimes used for IBD and she thought that Sneakers may have this too, so it is possible it is helping that too (no way to be sure if that's why for sure, but nothing else has changed.)

Her bloodwork results will be back tomorrow so we will see how her kidney values look and whether her anemia is improved. My vet said we might be able to cut back or stop some of her medications if she is improving.

That is WONDERFUL news!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! the numbers look good! :cross:

Fabulous news!

Just checking on Sneakers.... Did you get the blood tests? :cross:

Hi,

I wanted to find out if you did go through with the stem cell treatment and if it helped? My cat has had CRF since 2012. He is now 13. I am very interested in stem cell therapy but want to hear from others in regards to their results/costs. Please let me know.