Do Stem Cells Increase Stroke Recovery?

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Strokes kill almost 130,000 people in the United States each year out of over 200,000 people who experience them. and the ones who are fortunate enough to survive it have a difficult recovery, usually never fully recovering fully from the stroke. A stroke is when oxygen is cut off from the brain, usually because of a blood clot. Once oxygen is cut off from the brain, cells start dying rapidly, and these cells cannot recover. If a person survives a stroke they may experience difficulty walking, paralysis on one or both sides of the body, weak muscles, blurred or double vision, or speech loss, along with many other things. Sadly there are not many cures for this except physical therapy, until recently. This new treatment for stroke recovery is stem cells. These cells are taken from bone marrow or nerve cells from aborted fetuses. Stem cells are essentially blank cells, so this helps replace the cells that died during the stroke. The cells are extracted, then processed by a lab, then injected into either the patient's brain or spinal cord. The window for implanting these stem cells is short, scientists have not yet confirmed this exact time frame, but has been proven that the sooner the stem cells are implanted, the better they work. Tests have been done on rats, and humans, and both have showed these positive results. This is a vital strategy in stroke recovery and helping tens of thousands of Americans if it is continuing to be found successful. Stem cells in stroke recovery relate to what we have learned in biology this year because we learned how cells work in repairing and building in our bodies. This is just another way that cells help our bodies. The stem cells also trigger enzymes called Matrix Metalloproteinases (MMP). MMP is a key enzyme in tissue injury and remodeling. There is some debate  about if this method is affective and whether it is okay to use cells from aborted fetuses in this recovery treatment for stroke patients. There is unknown results about how stem cells affect stroke victims in the long run, especially because this method just started being administered very recently. It is hard to prove that this method works also, because the person may just be improving on their own without the stem cell's help. Another point of debate is whether it is ethical to use the cells of aborted fetuses for stem cell recovery in stroke victims.