(Dennis Thompson/ Health Day) — Stem cells derived from a baby’s umbilical cord can help save the lives of the sickest COVID-19 patients, results from a small new clinical trial suggest.
Severely ill COVID patients who received two intravenous doses of stem cells three days apart were much more likely to survive and recover quickly, researchers found.
“The results are quite spectacular,” said senior researcher Dr. Camillo Ricordi, director of the Diabetes Research Institute and Cell Transplant Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. “It’s probably the best trial ever done for a COVID cure, because we have 100% survival in subjects less than 85 years of age versus 42% survival in the control group.”
The clinical trial involved 24 COVID patients at one of two Miami-area hospitals who had developed severe acute respiratory distress syndrome, a condition in which the body’s immune response to a serious infection causes the lungs to fill with fluid. (…)