Parkinson’s diease (PD) is a neurological disorder, which gets progressively worse once the symptoms start appearing. The disease manifests as cognitive impairment, loss of motor control and even interrupted sleep cycles. Most common symptoms are tremors, gait and/or balance troubles, slowness of movements.

The hallmark of PD is a loss of dopamine, a neurochemical that’s produced in the substancia nigra part of the brainstem. This progressive loss is the cause of disease and its manifestations, unfortunately modern science is not able to solve why this loss occurs, so there is no cure yet.

How does stem cell therapy benefit Parkinson’s disease?

Stem cell therapy has shown some very promising results for patients with Parkinson’s disease, as it can help with the symptoms and to some extent restore some of the damage done by the disease. Stem cells can minimize the inflammation around the substancia nigra, this inflammation is what is responsible for the death of dopamine producing cells. Reducing inflammation prevents the cellular death; stem cells may also activate the neural progenitor cells to try and replace some of the cells that have been killed.

Adult stem cells may slow down the degenerative progression of PD symptoms, while repairing/replacing damaged neurons and brain tissue. Resultant effect is a marked improvement of quality of life for the patient, may include:

• Improved gait, reduction of balance troubles
• Reduction of tremors
• Increased energy, slowness of movements may subside
• Better coordination and motor control

The Procedure

Stem cell treatments at TheSwissClinic are minimally invasive, most often an outpatient procedure so patient may go home the same day. Recovery times vary patient to patient, we strive to keep our patients downtime to the minimum. What happens at our clinic on the day of your procedure:

• Physician makes a tiny puncture through your skin either in abdomen or thighs, to harvest a small amount of fat.
• The fat is then processed in a Lipogems device using sterile saline solution. During this gentle process of micro-fragmentation, fat is washed, rinsed and resized into smaller clusters all while maintaining its natural healing phenomenon. This closed-loop system removes blood, fatty oils and inflammatory cells, leaving behind the concentrated fat (pericytes) which is therapeutic.
• Prior to stem cell therapy infusion, mannitol, a type of intravenous fliud, is administered. This is to facilitate the stem cells in crossing the blood brain barrier, for a more effective stem cells delivery.
• Physician injects the resultant cells into the blood stream intravenously. The amount administered is altered according to ones individualized treatment plan.