Word: placentas
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TREND Beautifiers that use parts of human or animal placenta to rejuvenate skin are coming out of the closet...
Cosmetic companies usually love to trumpet their "miracle" ingredients. But placenta--the embryonic tissue formed in pregnant mammals and used for decades as a wrinkle reducer--is one beautifier that has long been kept under wraps. That may be changing: Mila Skin Care's new Amber Cream Placental has become a hot seller by proudly promoting the taboo ingredient. A 59-year-old aesthetician in Beverly Hills, Calif., says she gave up Botox injections a month after she started using the skin smoother. "The lines are just staying away," she says...
...genetic matches that can take months to find and often fail. "The doctors basically told us [transplants] would either kill them or save them," says Theresa. So they chose an experimental alternative: transfusing the youngsters with a type of stem cell harvested from a newborn's umbilical cord and placenta. Unlike their more controversial cousins, embryonic stem cells, which are harvested from aborted fetuses and can develop into almost any cell, cord blood cells are used to rebuild blood and immune systems--exactly what the LaRue boys needed. In effect, says UCLA's Dr. E. Richard Stiehm, "we transplant another...
...seek out telltale proteins that may indicate spina bifida, neural-tube defects or Down syndrome--or looking directly at the fetus with ultrasound scans. For women over 35, doctors usually recommend more invasive procedures in which actual fetal cells are gathered from the womb's amniotic fluid (amniocentesis) or placenta (chorionic villus sampling...
Cord blood, which is painlessly harvested after birth, seems to be an ideal solution. The placenta is teeming with the all-important stem cells that can generate a new immune system. Even better, these cells are, as doctors put it, "naive," making them less likely to attack their new host. As a result, a cord-blood transplant doesn't have to match a recipient quite so closely as a bone-marrow transplant. This experimental treatment could prove especially helpful to African-American patients and other minorities whose greater genetic diversity often means they have trouble finding a good bone-marrow...