Romania, 8 years old

When she was 13 months old Loredana first started to learn to walk, and her parents noticed that she was unbalanced. She continuously fell down. From that moment her symptoms got worse and worse. The doctors said that in a number of years, she would have passed away.
In 2002 a SMA (Spinal Muscular Atrophy) was diagnosed.

Before the treatment

Loredana had a hard time in moving her legs while she was lying down or in moving her legs up off the bed. She could not get up from a lying position. She could not walk. Her left leg was very weak and smaller than her right leg: for this reason she was forced to over-use the right leg to compensate, and her right leg suffered because of this.

Her arms were weak: she could lift a kilogram of weight only from eight to ten times. She could move her hands and her fingers, but her grip was not sufficient to hold a pencil. She could not stand on her hands and knees. She had trouble in moving her ankles. Her back muscles were weak. She had no bladder control, often wetting her pants. She could not dress by herself.

Beginning june 30th 2006 Loredana was treated with umbilical cord stem cell injections, along with nerve growth factor.

After the treatment

At the end of the treatment, she could sit up from a lying position by herself. She could move both her legs more. Her back muscles were stronger and she could stand on her hands and knees. Her arms became stronger, allowing Loredana to lift a weight of one kilogram forty times. Her ankles became stronger. She could lift her legs.

Videos:
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July 28th, 2006: all the movements became a little better. She could lift a one kilogram weight one hundred times.

Videos (in Romanian with English translation):
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November 26th, 2006: Loredana could now tell when it was time to go to the bathroom, up to one or two minutes before she had to go. She could hold a telephone or a pen and could even write. Her left leg grew, almost looking the same as the right leg. Her right leg had a benefit, too, since now she could use both her legs. She could stand much longer with support, but still could not walk. Loredana was mostly happy for the improvements in her bladder control and in her hand movements, but in her parents’ opinion the most important thing was that the disease stopped its progression.

Videos:
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Notes
As is quite common, at the end of the treatment our patients have some improvements - but these are just the beginning. The point is, in case of degenerative diseases many times we have seen that all of the improvements occur during the treatment and immediately after, then stop.

Since the treatment for SMA patients seems similar to that for spinal cord injury (where the bulk of the improvements happen months and months after the treatment) we decided to follow up Loredana to Romania in november, hoping to find out new improvements: she was the first foreign SMA patient treated that we have been able to follow.

It has been very encouraging for us to notice that in Loredana’s case the treatment not only gave immediate benefits, but continued to give more improvement throughout the next two ½ months after the girl returned home.

Since no one in Loredana's family speaks english, they brought a friend along with them to China to act as an interpreter. He is speaking in the first two series of videos. In the videos taken during our visit to Romania, we asked Razvan Iordache (a.k.a. Gabi), another patient, to translate for us.