Researchers at St. Mary's Seoul Hospital have confirmed that stem cell therapy can become a new treatment option for neurogenic bladder, an intractable disease.

Neurogenic bladder is a bladder dysfunction in which urination disorders and urinary incontinence appear due to chronic diseases such as neurological diseases and diabetes. Typical neurological disorders include stroke, Parkinson's disease, dementia, cerebrovascular lesions, spinal cord lesions, spinal discs, and peripheral nerve diseases.

"If such diseases cause an overactive bladder, symptoms such as urinary urgency and urge incontinence may appear," the hospital said. "When the bladder's function is decreased, patients also may have to attach a urine line for a long period due to dysuria symptoms."

Despite such inconvenience, the disease is considered refractory as there is currently no treatment for the illness, the hospital added.

To discover a treatment for the disease, the team, led by Professors Kim Sae-woong and Bae Woong-jin at the hospital, experimented with comparing the SDF-1 (stromal cell-derived factor 1) overexpressing stem cells produced by SL Bigen with the normal-expressing stem cell and control group.

As a result, in the fourth week of treatment, the team confirmed that the SDF-1 overexpressing stem cell group significantly increased their bladder contractility.

"There are currently various researches for developing a treatment for neurogenic bladder as it is difficult to expect good effects with general treatments," Professor Bae said. "While our therapeutic candidates still need a lot of research to be applied in the actual clinical field, the goal is to develop a treatment for urinary diseases through intermediary researches."

The journal, Cell Transplantation, has published the result of the study.