Fetal tissue grafts for cerebellar atrophy.

It has been shown in a rat model that surgical injury to the right cerebellum with resultant ataxia can be corrected by implantation of embryonic cerebellar tissue into the injured cerebellum. Histological examinations of the cerebellar tissue revealed that mitoses of Purkinje cells of the implanted group were increased substantially over the control group's. The surgically induced ataxia resolved more rapidly in the cerebellar implant group than the control group. Based on this experimental data, a similar technique was applied in 6 patients with severe hereditary cerebellar degenerative ataxia. The preliminary results in these 6 surgically implanted patients with heredity degenerative cerebellar disease show 2 with marked improvement, 3 with moderate improvement and 1 with improvement for 2 months followed by mild deterioration but still better than presurgery. We also studied immunological markers in the blood and CSF in an attempt to determine whether rejection of implanted tissue occurs.