Dr. Neil Riordan on health: what the evidence says · JRE #1066

“they are the equivalent of what a typical dose we give in Panama is like roughly 120 million cells. And all of them got better. All of them symptomatically improved. And the cool thing was that TNF-alpha and another molecule similar to it decreased by 50%.”

What the evidence says

A peer-reviewed, controlled study matching the '172 patients' detail does exist: Wang et al. (2013, Stem Cells and Development, PMID 23941289) enrolled 172 rheumatoid arthritis patients with inadequate response to standard treatment, randomizing 136 to umbilical cord MSC infusion (plus DMARDs) and 36 to a medium/placebo control (plus DMARDs), with follow-up up to 8 months. That study reported serum TNF-alpha and IL-6 both decreased significantly (P<0.05) after treatment and no comparable improvement in controls, so Riordan's cytokine claim and his description of near-universal clinical improvement are substantially grounded in real, controlled, published data, not fabricated. However, several details in his retelling do not match the paper: the published dose was 4x10^7 (40 million) cells per infusion, not the roughly 120 million cells Riordan cites (he appears to be describing his own Panama clinic's typical dosing rather than the dose actually used in this Chinese-hospital trial, which he was not involved in and does not credit by name). The paper also does not report a precise 'eight and a half months' duration or a 30-patient retreatment subgroup with a further 50% cytokine drop, details that could not be independently verified in the available record and may come from unpublished follow-up data from Riordan's own clinic. Riordan founded and directs the Stem Cell Institute in Panama, which sells umbilical cord MSC infusions for rheumatoid arthritis and other conditions, giving him a financial incentive to present these results as more definitive, more applicable to his own clinic's dosing, and more directly attributable to his own work than the underlying study supports. No umbilical cord MSC product is FDA-approved for rheumatoid arthritis.

1. Human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cell therapy for patients with active rheumatoid arthritis: safety and efficacy - PubMed · government
2. Efficacy and Safety of Umbilical Cord Mesenchymal Stem Cell Therapy for Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients: A Prospective Phase I/II Study - PMC · government
3. Important Patient and Consumer Information About Regenerative Medicine Therapies · government