Growing a New Immune System 
When the immune system goes awry and starts to destroy the body it was designed to protect, sometimes the only way to stop its damage is to get a new immune system. Really. Researchers have discovered that a procedure called autologous stem cell transplantation allows people with the most severe and treatment-resistant autoimmune diseases to start growing a healthy new immune system within just a couple of weeks. 

As the name suggests, autologous (meaning "self") stem cell transplantation, involves transplanting one's own stem cells back into one's own body. Found in the bloodstream and bone marrow, stem cells are primitive, immature cells that have the potential to grow into different types of cells that exist in the various systems of our bodies. 

To perform an autologous stem cell transplant, a doctor first removes some of the patient's blood - and occasionally bone marrow - then separates and removes the stem cells, reserving them for later use. Meanwhile, the patient receives high doses of the strong immunosuppressive drug cyclophosphamide, which destroys the faulty immune system. 
Later, the preserved stem cells are infused back into the bloodstream, where they start to form a new immune system, usually in about 10 days. Within one year, a person could potentially have a healthy new immune system - one that doesn't attack its own tissue, says Ann Traynor, MD, of Northwestern University Medical Center's Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center in Chicago. Although the procedure is still too new to tell, the hope is that autoimmune diseases like lupus will not redevelop at all - or at least not for many years, she says. 

At press time, 25 people in the United States had undergone stem cell transplants for lupus. Twenty-four children with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis have had the procedure. The majority of stem cell transplant patients are doing well; however, four of the children and two of the lupus patients died due to complications of the procedure. The risk of complications--including serious infection, bleeding, blood clots and the failure of the new immune system to take hold--is a major downside of stem cell transplants. For that reason, doctors currently reserve it for people with the most severe disease that hasn't responded to any other treatment. For those people, the procedure offers some hope in a situation where there once was little hope.

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