Taking antibiotics with Stem Cells

[usmaggu]

After my son's procedure of Bone Marrow Stem Cells Therapy, in which doctors aspired his marrow from hip bone and then extracted stem cells, and infused intrathecal and intravaneously, doctors advised few antibiotics to my son for 5 days, to rule out any chance of infection. On asking doctor that the procedure seems perfectly safe as we are giving my son what we have extracted from his body only, and no other foreign substance, then how come the chance of infection arise. For which my doctor replied, that there is very minimal chance that there may be some bacteria/ virus in bone marrow
which might not be dangerous if present there, but now when we are infusing it in the brain, it may be very dangerous for brain.

I understand that antibiotics slow down the body cells and thus slowing down and killing stem cells.

My concern is that what if 5 days of antibiotics kill all the stem cells given, or if not kill all the cells, how much will it damage the stem cells.

Is there any safe antibiotic that we can give post stem cells treatment to minimize the cell loss.

 

[barbara]

I don't know who told you that antibiotics kill stem cells. If you went to a reputable clinic with reputable doctors and they advised the use of an antibiotic for 5 days post treatment, I am not understanding why you would not follow their advice. Some clinics prescribe antibiotics routinely for patients post treatment.
I am not a doctor, but my advise is if you were comfortable enough to put your son's life in the hands of the doctors at the clinic where you went, then you should also be comfortable enough with their post treatment advice for him.

 

[Ryker's Dad]

I may have a similar issue

We banked my son's cord blood but it was contaminated with E Coli according the the final cell report provided by the bank. We were rejected for the current Duke study because of this. It doesn't mean his blood is bad but when doing a double blind study, you want no contaminated results.

I've been investigating the possible effects of administering antibiotics along with his cord blood but I can't find any info. My MD at the cord blood bank has also been searching for info on this with little luck.

Can anyone point me to a source?

 

[usmaggu]

Experimental Study on rats

I found this article about a experiment study on rats to see the effects of antibiotics on adult one marrow stem cells:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6655804

The article reads as below:

[Effects of various antibiotics and natural mycotoxins on the hematopoietic stem cells of the bone marrow in normal and adjuvant-treated rats].

This experiment was carried out, in order to investigate the effect of antibiotics and natural mycotoxin on the hematopoietic stem cells at the normal and inflammatory condition. Adjuvant-treated rats (Aj-rats) are considered as a model of human rheumatoid arthritis. We measured the CFU-C and CFU-E of bone marrow of normal and Aj-rats which were injected with large (1.0 g/kg X 3) and small doses (0.5 g/kg X 3) of ampicillin (ABPC), cefazolin (CEZ), chloramphenicol (CP) and fusarenon-X (F-X). In Aj-rats the number of CFU-C was 1.5 times higher and CFU-E 60% less than normal. Injection of large doses of ABPC enhanced markedly the numbers of CFU-C in Aj-rats and suppressed slightly CFU-E in normal rats. Large doses of CEZ inclined to increase CFU-C and decreased CFU-E in normal and Aj-rats. Injection of small doses of CP tended to increase CFU-C and to decrease CFU-E, and large doses of CP to suppress both CFU-C and CFU-E levels in normal or Aj-rats. F-X, natural mycotoxin suppressed markedly both CFU-C and CFU-E levels of normal rats, and slightly the CFU-E in Aj-rats. These results suggest that one should pay attention to the fact that some doses of antibiotics or natural mycotoxin might be harmful on the bone marrow hematopoietic stem cells.

 

[barbara]

Comments from Dr. Young:


It depends on the particular stem cells as to the affect of various antibiotic treatments. Hematopoietic stem cells may be affected more than other tyes of stem cells. Not enough research has been performed on human-derived stem cells (of various types, i.e., embryonic, amniotic, progenitor, pluripotent, or totipotent), much less their site of harvest (i.e., morula, blastocyst, gonadal ridges, chorionic sac, placenta, adipose, muscular, bone marrow, blood-vasculature, etc.), to determine cause and effect of antibiotics on various types of stem cells. In other words, "one size does NOT fit all" categories.