For information on Beike foreign patient trials for brain injury, stroke, Guillain-Barre synrdome and slow onset ALS, see the article Beike to Treat Foreign Patients.

Just before the Chinese holiday we went to visit Dr. Yang Bo from Beike in Zheng Zhou and Shen Zhen. We visited with two of his ALS patients in their homes and with a ten year old girl who was treated for Guillan-Barre syndrome.

The first patient we saw was in Shen Zhen and she had a severe case of Guillain-Barre syndrome. The disease saw no improvement a year before the stem cell treatments last month. After the treatments, the ten year old girl could walk 2000 meters without falling vs. 30 meters before and enjoyed going out more than before and playing with the other children. She used to rarely go out and now she spends most of her time outside playing. Go to her patient experience to see details.  

The second patient we met with was Ms Wang who was diagnosed with ALS in 2001 but had symptoms since 1999 and was misdiagnosed. Ms. Wang was first treated with her own neural stem cells in November of 2003. The treatment got rid of the pain in her shoulders, allowed her to lift hold her neck up on her own and walk further with help then she could before. Over the next year the ALS came back but more slowly until finally in October of 2004, she started a series of umbilical cord stem cell injections which brought her back to where she was after the first treatment. Since the final treatment in April of 2005, she said she has little regression. She is looking forward to her next series of treatments. See the end of Ms. Wang's Patient Experience for a detailed description of our interview with her.

The second patient we met was Ms. Li (we have not put our visit with her in the patient experiences section yet) who had a series of four injections finished in March 2005. Ms. Li has a severe form of Bulbar ALS and over two years the disease progressed extremely fast. For Ms. Li the treatments gave her a lot of improvement immediately after the injections - especially after the first two - but after the leaving the hospital her the symptoms came back fast. Six months later, she is now at the same stage as she was before the treatments and while the disease is coming on more slowly than before, it is still progressing. For the family, the six months of respite from the disease is not enough to do the treatments again.

These visits reaffirmed China Stem Cell News' original view that the stem cell treatments from Beike are have about a similar effect as the treatments from Dr. Huang. From this visits, we have decided to faciltate foreign patients with slow onset ALS for treatment with Beike - the first coming in late October and patients with Guillain-Barre disease in addition to brain damage and stroke patients.

We will continue to follow up with patients the best we can and keep you updated.