There is no current cure for cerebral palsy and researchers are primarily focused on finding ways to make life more manageable.
What Is Being Done to Find a Cure?
Cerebral palsy is a difficult condition to treat and an even harder one to fully comprehend. The hope for a cure lies in getting a better understanding of cerebral palsy, but it’s important to understand that the current goal of most research is to learn new ways to reduce symptoms and limit brain damage.
As neuroscience advances our understanding of the developing brain, researchers hope greater progress toward a cure will be made. Currently, efforts to find a cure rest solely with stem cell therapy.
Stem Cell Therapy & Cerebral Palsy
Stem cell transplantation for cerebral palsy is still in the early phases. More research is needed to determine how effective it could be. However, there are some clinical trials testing the effectiveness of using umbilical cord blood infusions to introduce stem cells into the body.
Cerebral palsy is caused by damage to the brain’s motor control center, which consists of several parts of the brain and billions of different brain cells. Understanding how all the networks of cells in these parts of the brain work together is the reason treating CP is so hard.
Stem cells can develop into specific types of brain cells, replacing those which are damaged. Current regenerative medicine applications suggest that stem cells placed into a person’s body can stimulate a response that mends damaged cells or that the stem cells can be used to create new brain cells in a lab to replace the damaged cells.
