My immune system was rebooted to tackle Crohn’s disease

deepan Shah, 31, a telecoms engineer, lives in hounslow, West london. he received stem cell treatment for Crohn’s disease. he says: I’VE HAD aggressive Crohn’s disease since childhood. Basically your immune system attacks your gut — it left me permanently fatigued and I suffered from diarrhoea, cramping pains and mood swings.

At the age of 20 I had part of my bowel removed and a stoma bag attached to collect waste. Drugs never worked for long, and in my late 20s, my weight dropped to 37kg (I’m 5ft 2in; the disease also affected my growth).

In 2010, I asked my consultant to refer me for a trial at the Royal London Hospital, where they were testing stem-cell treatments as a way of rebooting your immune system, to stop the attack on my bowel.

The treatment involved chemotherapy to destroy my faulty immune cells, and then injections of growth factors that made the stem cells in my bone marrow multiply and spill out into the bloodstream, from where they could be harvested and frozen. The stem cells were infused back into my body.

Soon after, for the first time since I was ten, I was off medication. But 18 months later my symptoms flared. This time my immune system responded to drugs that previously hadn’t worked. I still have Crohn’s, but can lead a normal life.

EXPERT COMMENT: James Lindsay, a professor of inflammatory bowel disease at Queen Mary University of

London, says in Crohn’s disease, chemotherapy destroys immune cells that attack gut bacteria, causing inflammation.

‘What stem-cell treatment then does is repopulate the gut with immune cells (derived from stem cells) that have no memory — but there’s always the chance the stored memory of the bacteria will come back and start attacking the immune system again.

‘Stem-cell treatments usually give the patients a disease-free period lasting years in some cases.’