So far, these pig cells have been tested on 20 people with Parkinson's, six with epilepsy and six with Huntington's disease. Of the first 11 Parkinson's patients treated, three improved significantly. While the supply of fetal pig cells is not a problem, there are other drawbacks. Patients may need to take immune-suppressing drugs to keep their bodies from rejecting the tissue, and there is a remote chance that dangerous animal viruses might be passed along. A bit more elegant, perhaps, is a method being tested at the University of Pittsburgh.
Doctors there are experimentally transplanting human cells into the brains of stroke victims.
The cells are similar to stem cells, the factories that manufacture various kinds of tissue inside the body. The transplants are being tested on 12 stroke victims. All suffer paralysis or other serious disability, even though the strokes destroyed only a small bit of their brain tissue. Three seem to have improved. One walks better, another is less stiff, while a third has better control of arm and leg movements.