Immunoablative Therapy with Bone Marrow or Peripheral Stem Cell Transplantation for Multiple Sclerosis

This report evaluates the efficacy of immunoablative therapy with bone marrow or peripheral stem cell transplantation (SCT) for multiple sclerosis (MS). The use of immunoablative therapy for any other autoimmune disease, such as rheumatologic disorders, hematologic diseases, other neurologic disorders (e.g., myasthenia gravis), or any malignancy, is outside the scope of this report, as are any other methods of treating MS.

Immunoablation therapy with stem cell transplantation (SCT) is a complex medical procedure that involves destroying or ablating diseased cells from the immune system and then reconstituting the immune system with healthy stem cells harvested from the patient's own bone marrow or peripheral blood (autologous) or from a donor (allogeneic). Interest in immunoablative therapy for multiple sclerosis (MS) arose from observations that cases of pre-existing autoimmune disease coincidental with malignancies have sometimes gone into prolonged remission when the malignancy was treated with immunoablation followed by SCT.

This is performed...