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Thursday, September 4, 2014

Israel May Have The Best Contribution To The ALS Challenge: A TREATMENT!


Israelis such as UN Ambassador Ron Prosor in the video above are accepting participation in the ALS Challenge, taking their ice water baths and sending money to the very worthy charity. But their participation may not be the number one contribution to fighting this incurable disease; an Israeli treatment to ease symptoms and slow the progression of ALS and other incurable neuromuscular diseases is going into Phase 2 clinical trials in three major US medical centers.

BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics’, an Israeli company, has developed a technique for growing and enhancing stem cells harvested from patients’ own bone marrow. The enhanced cells secrete elevated levels of nerve-growth factors that protect existing motor neurons, promote motor neuron growth and reestablish nerve-muscle interaction.

According to website Israel 21C:

Two initial trials conducted at Jerusalem’s Hadassah University Medical Center led by stem-cell transplant pioneer Dr. Dimitrios Karussis, head of Hadassah’s Multiple Sclerosis Center, showed promising preliminary results in 24 patients.
“We are working on analysis of the data, but we can say there is some positive effect,” Karussis tells ISRAEL21c.

“In some of the parameters there was up to a 60 percent beneficial response after the treatment. We hope in the next three months we will have a paper ready to be published.”
Four ALS sufferers whose disease was too far advanced to join the study received the treatment as "compassionate cases."
All four are alive as of this writing. Globally, some 90% of ALS patients die of respiratory failure within three to five years after the onset of symptoms, though a new study shows that in Israel, 20% of ALS patients survive past 10 years, possibly due to earlier diagnosis and treatment. As the disease progresses, patients lose the ability to stand or walk, and have difficulty breathing as the muscles of the respiratory system weaken.

All four had, at least for three to six months, a response of improvement in respiratory function or muscle power,” reports Karussis.

”The most impressive response was in the rabbi [octogenarian sage Rabbi Rafael Shmuelevitz], who had a very severe and unique combination of ALS and myasthenia gravis. He improved for about six months substantially, started walking and speaking, and then the effects faded and then we did a second injection and he had even more impressive improvement. This makes it highly unlikely to be a placebo effect, which is important to note.”

[Omri] Chotam [a former paratrooper in his 20s] also received two additional NurOwn injections through the compassionate use program, resulting in functional improvements and halting the progression of the disease for about 18 months now.
The data from the initial tests show a "beneficial change in the progression of the disease." One of the issues to be tested in the U.S. trials will be the protocols and effects of multiple injections on the disease in the long term.
BrainStorm CEO Dr. Tony Fiorino tells ISRAEL21c that 48 patients will participate in the multicenter, double-blind, randomized trial beginning in Massachusetts General Hospital, the University of Massachusetts Memorial Hospital and the Mayo Clinic.

“Each of the three sites is headed by important thought leaders in the field of ALS,” he notes.

In this study approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), 36 of the patients will receive NurOwn enhanced stem cells from their own marrow, and 12 will receive a placebo. After the study is completed in early 2016, the results will be analyzed for safety and efficacy.
Should this trial be successful, the same treatment can be used to treat any disease involving the death of neurons, including multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s.

24 comments:

Unknown said...

Would just like to say that FIDF Michigan just posted that he was a strong supporter in the Miami chapter this morning... You and Schlussel, slamming the dead to rake in hits is just wrong. Barenakedislam, I read you, I usually like you, but you are dead wrong in your actions here.

Unknown said...

I did find Sotloff's mother's efforts to personally appeal to the caliph entirely understandable even though it was obviously and hopelessly unrealistic. Anyone who knows how the Islamic State views infidels knew her words would have no effect. An American woman without a head covering? Really?

What's sad and troubling is the family's continued refusal to acknowledge what fundamentalist Islam is and what that doctrine's attitude is towards non-Muslims. That the family spokesman challenged the caliph to a debate on Islam is truly bizarre. Are you kidding me? The guy just had your son beheaded.

Unknown said...

I suspect they confuse him with Foley, who WAS a supporter of jihad. Sotloff was a great man and a mensch.

Unknown said...

Sotloff was clearly a naive liberal, and he appeared to see things through rose tinted spectacles, his politics were clearly garden variety liberal, and frankly I just roll my eyes, but so? Plenty of my relatives are the same, worse and at least half of Jewry think like he did, (how many Jews in America voted for Obama again?) accordingly should we then wait to find out if any American Jewish victims of Muslim terror, voted for Obama or not, before deciding to mourn for them or not? At least half of Israeli Jews are like Sotloff, especially in a liberal city like Tel Aviv. Should we then wait to see what the politics of every victim of every suicide bombing attack is in Israel before mourning them or not?


Agree with Jeff that both Left and Right have their loons. Sotloff's Muslim conversion was clearly insincere and done to make his reporting viable and his life easier. It's also ridiculous to think that because he spoke Arabic he was anti-Israel! Guess all those people working in military intelligence in Israel, spying on Hamas and Hezbollah and other Arab Muslim terror networks are anti-Israel! Of course if they don't know Arabic, they can't understand a thing! Arabic is actively encouraged in Israel as the language for Jews to learn after English, for reasons so screamingly obvious.


Nobody can come with a smoking gun quote of Sotloff supporting Hamas or ISIS, so anybody making such a claim has no credibility. One thing that was a bit ridiculous, the understandable but ultimately absurd attempt to cover up Sotloff's Jewishness and Israeli residence and citizenship. With a name like Sotloff! Did they not think that ISIS or at least their Western members wouldn't be able to discover that it's a Jewish surname in no time at all? Still when one is desperate, I guess I can understand the family doing whatever they can.


Also in closing, with all due respect to Sotloff and Foley and their families, why do their lives count more than the Yazidis who are being massacred and their women gang raped? Because the lives of Americans are worth more? Let's get some perspective on this tragedy, the scale of ISIS mass murder demands no less.

Unknown said...

Arnon I have seen no proof that Foley was a supporter of jihad

Unknown said...

"Islamic culture (as opposed to the Islamist culture of death) is a tradition rich in the arts, medicine, astronomy etc."


It is true that the arts, medicine and astronomy were practiced by many of the cultures Islam enslaved. This does not mean that Islam is conducive to the arts, medicine, astronomy, or any other intellectual or aesthetic activity.

Unknown said...

'Sotloff embedded himself with the Free Syrian Army (FSA)'


Is all I need to know. That means that he aligned himself with Soros, Obama and the cabal of insanity.
You're right.

Unknown said...

You do a GREAT job, BNI.

Unknown said...

Jeff Dunetz, you are a nice Jew, but this is better left in emails. Bad choice to attack a person who fiercely fights against our enemies.
Shalom.

Unknown said...

It does not mean he was a terrorist sympathizer who hated Israel.

Unknown said...

She attacked Sotloff in public not via Email

Unknown said...

"Islamic culture (as opposed to the Islamist culture of death) is a tradition rich in the arts, medicine, astronomy etc."

No, that is not what islamic culture is. That is what muslims adopted after they invaded other peoples lands and murdered and enslaved their peoples. Islamic culture is in the koran, it is the culture of the Arabs it originated with.
Muslims have stolen cultures that they now call 'islamic', they stole from the Torah and the New Testament, they turned a Hindu shrine in Mecca, the Kaaba, into a muslim shrine, the stole churches in Byzantium and Europe and turned them into mosques. the list is endless. The one thing they did invent, but by using mathematics developed by the Egyptians and Greeks, was algebra. They developed that because they only wanted to know the exact time to pray. Once they worked out the moon rises, that was it, no more interest in it.
Please do not glorify something that does not exist. I can't believe I have read such ignorance here.

Unknown said...

If you look at Sotloff's profile picture on his twitter account, he is dressed in traditional Yemenite clothing. He lived in Yemen for many years - not as part of the Yemenite Jewish community but as a muslim. If he was as honest as you say, I would find it hard to believe they would allow a Jew to live among them as an equal. Especially seeing the attacks the Jewish Yemenite community have suffered and are now being brought to Israel to escape.

Unknown said...

There is no such thing as a fake conversion to islam; you only have to repeat the shahada in the company of other muslims, there is no special place. Once you have repeated that, to muslims, you have now converted/reverted and there is no going back: the punishment for apostasy is death

Unknown said...

Exactly!

Unknown said...

With respect, for muslims, there is no such thing as an "insincere" conversion. Once you have repeated the shahada, in company of other muslims, you are now a muslim. To then try to leave islam is apostasy and the islamic punishment for that is death.

Unknown said...

Shame on you.

Unknown said...

Then your "reporting skills" are sorely lacking.

Unknown said...

No, telling the truth is never wrong.

Unknown said...

Yes it does. If you were sane you could see that.

Unknown said...

But steven, ever the idiot, seemed to think converting would save his head. steven was wrong and I don't feel a bit sorry for his stupid, terrorist loving ass.

Unknown said...

You gave 4 comments this morning..I published them because you didn't give a shred of evidence and made yourself look ignorant. Now go take your meds and bother a different website

Unknown said...

FO, you stupid bint. I've done my research, not my fault you are willfully blind and stupid. Trust me, your shoddy reporting skills and lack of common sense will keep me away from your BS site.

Unknown said...

Dear ilovefudge@nntc.net you may wonder why your comments were removed, you may also wonder why you are designated as a commenter with a low reputation on Disqus. Actually I am sure you can't figure it out. Well anyway you have been banned from commenting here also. Please go find a site which can appreciate your lack of a vocabulary.