Stem Cell ---A New Way to Treat IgA Nephropathy

◆ What is IgA Nephropathy?
IgA Nephropathy derives its name from deposits of Immunoglobulin A (IgA) in a granular pattern in the mesangium (by immunofluorescence), a region of the renal glomerulus.
The reason for why people get the disease is that the decrease of their immunity gives a chance to bacteria to invade the body, causing infection in the mucosae of the upper respiratory tract and the gastrointestinal tract. Thus the abnormal IgA in human body can have the quality of antigenicity and stimulate the organisms to produce antibodies respectively, and then form antigen-antibody complex which is closely related to the binding protein of glomerular mesangial cells and its receptors. If the complex combines with the binding protein, they can affect the mesangial cells to proliferate and activate as well as secrete inflammatory factors, which is easy to stimulate the production of IgA antibody so that large amount of IgA may deposit in the mesangial area, finally cause ischemia and anoxia in the kidneys.
◆ How do stem cells treat IgA Nephropathy?
From the information above we can see that IgA Nephropathy is a kind of autoimmune disease, we must reconstruct the immune system in the whole body if we want to treat the disease fundamentally. Are stem cells able to do this project and why?
Here let us learn some unique properties of stem cells.
▲ Firstly, stem cells are capable of dividing and renewing themselves for long periods. That is to say, one stem cell may divide into millions of stem cells in the body during a certain period. Therefore, if a person need to transplant stem cells, only one or two times is enough.
▲ Secondly, stem cells are unspecialized. At the very beginning, stem cells are divided from the parent stem cells which do not have any specific abilities, and they are possible to keep this property if they can divide themselves into other unspecialized cells.
▲ Thirdly, stem cells can give rise to specialized cells. Although they are unspecialized, they can differentiate into many kinds of specialized cells which can perform different functions in various tissues such as muscle, blood, and nerves.

All the three properties assured that stem cells are able to rebuild the immune system in the body, thus IgA Nephropathy can be treated effectively and the patients can live a life with high quality.