Clinical Trials Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Jun 21, 2015; 21(23): 7264-7271
Published online Jun 21, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i23.7264
Autologous mobilized peripheral blood CD34+ cell infusion in non-viral decompensated liver cirrhosis
Mithun Sharma, Padaki Nagaraja Rao, Mitnala Sasikala, Mamata Reddy Kuncharam, Chimpa Reddy, Vardaraj Gokak, BPSS Raju, Jagdeesh R Singh, Piyal Nag, D Nageshwar Reddy
Mithun Sharma, Padaki Nagaraja Rao, Vardaraj Gokak, BPSS Raju, D Nageshwar Reddy, Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Asian Institute of Gastroenterology, Asian Healthcare Foundation, Hyderabad 500082, India
Mitnala Sasikala, Mamata Reddy Kuncharam, Chimpa Reddy, Asian Healthcare Foundation, Hyderabad 500082, India
Jagdeesh R Singh, Piyal Nag, Department of Interventional Radiology, Asian Institute of Gastroenterology, Hyderabad 500082, India
Author contributions: Sharma M, Sasikala M, Rao PN and Reddy DN designed research; Sharma M, Raju BPSS, Gokak V, Singh JR, Nag P, Sasikala M, Kuncharam MR, Reddy C, Rao PN and Reddy DN performed research; Sharma M analyzed data; Sharma M and Sasikala M wrote the paper.
Supported by Grants from Asian Healthcare Foundation.
Ethics approval: The study was reviewed and approved by the by the Asian Institute of Gastroenterology Institutional review board, Asian Institute of Gastroenterology Institutional Ethics Committee and Institutional Committee for Stem Cell Research.
Informed consent: All study participants, or their legal guardian, provided informed written consent prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest: All authors have received fees for serving as a consultant for Asian Institute of Gastroenterology and/or Asian Healthcare foundation. No conflict of interest exists in relation to the work submitted for consideration of publication.
Data sharing: Technical appendix, statistical code, and dataset available from the corresponding author at drmithunsharma@gmail.com Participants gave informed consent for data sharing
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Mithun Sharma, MD, Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Asian Institute of Gastroenterology, 6-3-661 Red Rose Café lane, Somajigudda, Hyderabad 500082, India. drmithunsharma@gmail.com
Telephone: +91-40-23378888 Fax: +91-40-23324255
Received: December 27, 2014
Peer-review started: December 29, 2014
First decision: January 22, 2015
Revised: February 3, 2015
Accepted: March 19, 2015
Article in press: March 19, 2015
Published online: June 21, 2015
Processing time: 175 Days and 2.3 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Cirrhosis of the liver is a chronic progressive disease with high morbidity and mortality without liver transplantation. Alternative stem cell based therapies have shown promising results. In our study, we used autologous CD34 positive (CD34+) cell infusion in decompensated cirrhotic patients of non-viral etiology. This is the first study which has compared these patients with controls who were selected from a waiting list of liver transplantation candidates. The results shows improvement in albumin at 1 mo and Model for End-Stage Liver Disease score at 3 mo. Though many questions still remain unanswered, stem cell therapy is a promising treatment modality and serves currently as a bridge to liver transplantation.