Stem cell treatment left woman with bone growing around one eye

It sounds like a nightmare. A California woman complains to her doctor about pain in one of her eyes. She leaves his office six-and-a-half hours later after surgery to remove small chunks of bone growing in her eyelid.

In a recent report in Scientific American, the doctor described how the woman "could not open her right eye without considerable pain and that every time she forced it open, she heard a strange click - a sharp sound, like a tiny castanet snapping shut."

As it turned out, the woman had received a new-fangled "stem cell treatment", whereby her own mesenchymal stem cells were extracted by liposuction from her abdomen and injected into her face.

Her cosmetic surgeons in Beverly Hills had told her new tissue would replace the old and that the therapy would prompt a release of chemicals that would reverse the signs of ageing.

We do not know if her skin improved but she did end up with bits of bone growing around one eye.

This is the reason why: mesenchymal stem cells are "multipotent", which means they can grow into different types of cells, including fat, cartilage and bone.