Safety

Stem Cell Therapy

The safety and tolerability of stem cell therapy has been clearly demonstrated in numerous studies involving large numbers of patients treated for a variety of conditions. Common conditions treated with stem cell therapy include orthopedic conditions such as osteoarthritis, heart disease, stroke, multiple sclerosis, autism, cerebral palsy and others.

Factors that affect safety and tolerability include individual patient’s health, source of stem cell products, stem cell dose, the frequency of treatment and method of administration (i.e., injections into the eye, brain and spinal cord are higher risk for adverse events compared to intravenous or local joint injections).

Non-serious and non-severe adverse events reported in the literature include headache, local injection site irritation, pain and swelling, fever, and others which have been documented to be short lived and typically did not require additional treatment. Infection is a serious complication and is always a risk with any type of injection therapy. Using universal administration safety protocols risk of infection due to administration procedure is significantly minimized, if not eliminated. However, the sterility of stem cells and stem cell products is of the upmost importance to eliminate risk of infection. Serious short and long term adverse reactions to stem cell therapy such as blindness, cancer, blot clots, stroke, death, etc., have been reported in published studies and in the media, but are exceedingly rare.

The safety and tolerability of stem cell therapy has been clearly demonstrated in numerous studies involving large numbers of patients treated for various different conditions. While we wait for phase II/III trials the current data is encouraging and supports use of stem cell therapy in the clinical setting.

For clinical studies demonstrating the safety of stem cell therapy, please visit our Safety Research Archive page.

For information on adverse events in stem cell therapy, please visit our Adverse Events page.