By Daily Mail Reporter
PUBLISHED: 12:03 EST, 4 September 2012 | UPDATED: 02:38 EST, 5 September 2012
Patients with broken spines have reported having feeling restored to areas that had previously been paralysed, after receiving stem cell injections.
Scientists said they were 'encouraged' after two of three patients injected with donated foetal brain tissue responded to treatment at Balgrist University Hospital in Zurich, Switzerland.
Each patient had around 20million neural stem cells delivered directly into their injured spinal cords between four and eight months after they were injured.
Early tests suggest stem cells could restore feeling to people with damaged spinal cords
Before the treatment none of the patients could feel anything below the nipples. Just three months after therapy two of the patients reported feeling some sensation. By six months they could detect both touch and heat between the chest and belly button. The third patient detected no changes.
Stephen Huhn, vice president of StemCells in Newark, California, that is developing the treatment told the New Scientist: 'The face we've seen responses to light touch, heat and electrical impulses so far down in two of the patients is very unexpected.
'They're really close to normal in those areas now in their sensitivity.'
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Hope for paralysed patients as stem cell jab restores feeling to patients with damaged spines