London, Nov 20: Researchers at the University of Edinburgh have pioneered an innovative cell therapy that significantly reduces severe liver-related complications in patients with cirrhosis, potentially averting hospitalization and death.
The treatment employs macrophage immune cells derived from the patient’s own cells, associated with tissue repair, and was tested in a clinical study involving 50 patients with cirrhosis caused by various factors like alcohol, fatty liver disease, and viral hepatitis.
Presented at the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) conference in Boston, the data revealed that the treatment effectively reduced serious liver-related complications over the one-year study.
Professor Stuart Forbes, a clinical hepatologist leading the trial, expressed optimism, stating, “This trial shows the treatment is well tolerated and is associated with reducing the clinical complications in patients with end-stage liver disease.”
In the trial, 26 patients received macrophage treatment, while 24 patients in the control group received standard medical care. After one year, none of the patients treated with macrophages experienced liver-related clinical events. In contrast, four patients in the control group developed severe liver-related adverse events, resulting in three deaths.
Chronic liver diseases and cirrhosis are prevalent and fatal conditions, causing approximately one million deaths annually worldwide. The study’s results, published in Nature Medicine, suggest that this treatment may offer a potential delay in the need for liver transplants, the current option for advanced liver disease, which is constrained by organ availability, patient eligibility, and complex aftercare.
