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RICHMOND -- A Richmond, Utah dog struggling for mobility is getting a new leash on life, courtesy of a new stem cell treatment for canines.
It's not embryonic cells, but the dog's own that are used in the treatment. North Logan vet Dr. James Israelsen of the Mountain View Veterinary Health Clinic performed the procedure on Coty.
"We have to harvest some fat from them to isolate the stem cells. And in her case, she's a thin dog, so we actually harvested a little bit of abdominal fat just from the front of her abdominal cavity," he explained.
Coty's owner, Dan Miller, says it was hard to watch his Alaskan Husky, once capable of 40 mile runs, get hit hard with degenerative arthritis and loose mobility. "Painkillers never really seemed to make a difference, at least in her stride, the limp in her stride," he said.
Coty went through other treatments, including glucosamine and even acupuncture, but they didn't help.
That's when the doctor suggested stem cell treatment as an option. It was an expensive option, one Miller says he was only able to afford because Dr. Israelsen performed it at cost -- a total of around $1,600 between his clinic's expenses and the payment to Vet-Stem of San Diego.
Dr. Israelsen removed about 60 grams of fat from Coty on March 16, 2009, and shipped it in a special temperature-controlled container to Vet-Stem. The company extracted the stem cells from Coty's fat, and then shipped it back to the clinic where it was injected straight into Coty's affected joint: an elbow. The entire process took about three days.
Miller says Coty's not showing signs of improvement yet, but Dr. Israelsen says that's not uncommon. He expects to be able to tell a difference sometime between one month and three months from the injection.
Veterinarians usually treat pets with therapies long used in humans, but in this case stem cell transplants in dogs like Coty might turn things around for us as well.
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Story compiled with contributions from Becky Bruce and Ed Yeates.
