— Difficult infection took weeks to identify; doctors warn about unproven treatments
by Sophie Putka – MedPage Today
A woman with multiple sclerosis (MS) who had intrathecal injections of umbilical cord stem cells in Mexico ended up with a severe Mycobacterium abscessus infection that took weeks to identify and treat, according to a case study.
In October 2022, the woman in her 30s traveled to Baja California, Mexico, and received two lumbar punctures of the stem cell product as a “treatment” for MS after researching the clinic online, Daniel Pastula, MD, of the University of Colorado and the Colorado School of Public Health, and colleagues reported in Emerging Infectious Diseases.
Her diagnostic odyssey started the day after her second injection, when she went to an emergency department in the U.S. for a headache and received an epidural blood patch for presumed postlumbar puncture cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leak.