Previous reports have shown that bone marrow cells can differentiate into a number of other types of cells, including liver cells, which could help patients with liver cirrhosis and chronic liver failure. To study this possibility, researchers, led by Isao Sakaida, M.D. of Japan's Yamaguchi University, studied the effect of transplanted bone marrow cells on mice with liver fibrosis.
The researchers first caused liver fibrosis in the mice by injecting them with carbon tetrachloride (CCI4) twice a week for four weeks. They then divided the mice into two groups and treated one with green fluorescent protein-positive blood marrow cells. They treated the control group with saline. All mice continued to be treated with carbon tetrachloride. After 1, 2, 3 or 4 weeks, the researchers assessed the extent of liver fibrosis in the mice. To measure survival rates, 15 mice from the experimental group and 15 from the control group were then treated with carbon tetrachloride for an additional 25 weeks.
After five weeks of treatment with carbon tetrachloride, the researchers detected liver fibrosis in the mice. Just one week after blood marrow cell transplantation, they found evidence of those cells in the liver, with more appearing as the weeks passed.
"Surprisingly," the researchers report, "four weeks later, the blood marrow cell-transplanted liver clearly showed reduction of liver fibrosis compared with the liver treated
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Contact: David Greenberg
dgreenbe@wiley.com
201-748-6484
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
7-Dec-2004