Autologous bone marrow stem cell transplantation for the treatment of ulcerative colitis complicated with herpes zoster: a case report

Abstract

Ulcerative colitis (UC) is a chronic inflammatory bowel disease with continuous or recurrent symptoms. A 42-year-old male patient with intermittent diarrhea accompanied by bloody mucopurulent stools was admitted to our hospital. The diagnosis of UC was confirmed by a combination of laboratory examination, colonoscopy, and histological assay. The patient developed herpes zoster in the hospital, which challenged traditional treatments. Therefore, we performed an autologous bone marrow cells to modulate the immune system with his permission. Autologous bone marrow mononuclear cells were collected and injected locally into the bowel mucosa, and subsequently injected systemically through a peripheral vein. After the patient underwent auto bone marrow mononuclear cells transplantations twice, the patient’s symptoms were alleviated. Furthermore, he recovered from hematochezia, and his hypersensitive C reactive protein decreased. Colonoscopy results showed reduced lesions and decreased areas with bleeding and edema in the sigmoid colon and rectum. No recurrence occurred in the subsequent two years, but long-time monitoring is still necessary for the prophylaxis of colorectal cancer.

Keywords

autograft / bone marrow stem cells / ulcerative colitis / cell therapy

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Acknowledgements

The present study was financially supported by the State Science and Technology Support Program (No. 2012BAI37B04), the Military Health Promotion Program (Nos. 10BJZ18 and 15BJZ41), Beijing National Science Foundation of China (No. 5154035) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 31600681, 81670496, 81402345, 81673873, and 21375133).

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Hang Xiang, Xiaomei Zhang, Chao Yang, Wenhuan Xu, Xin Ge, Rong Zhang, Ya Qiu, Wanjun Sun, Fan Li, Tianyuan Xiang, Haixu Chen, Zheng Wang, and Qiang Zeng declare that there are no conflicts of interest. All procedures were performed in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000. Informed consent was obtained from all patients for inclusion in the present study.

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2016 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg