Thursday, April 11, 2013

Arthritis Treatment: Does Stem Cell Treatment for OsteoArthritis Really work?


The very popular form of Arthritis, OsteoArthritis (OA), affects for upwards of 20 million Americans. The first targets for this disease may be the knee.

OsteoArthritis is a wear and tear disease involving hyaline articular cartilage. It arises as occupied lack of ability of cartilage to maintain excessive breakdown.

The basic Treatment approach for OsteoArthritis has not changed in additional than 50 years. Basically, physicians have been trained to treat the Symptoms of pain and try to restore function and wait for an inexorable journey to mixed replacement.

Different modalities just like physical therapy, analgesics (pain relievers), non-steroidal anti inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS), exercises, braces for your teeth, topical agents, and techniques of either corticosteroids ("cortisone"), or viscosupplements (lubricants) are all tried in addition to doctor throws up their own individual hands and says around the net patient "you need an excessive amount knee replacement. "

So essentially you will find the huge void between cure for Symptoms and eventual surgery.

Recently, excitement has swirled in the house role of regenerative medicine associated with solving the OsteoArthritis predicament. These include the rise in popularity of platelet-rich plasma and establish cells.

Unfortunately, this interest has taken untoward side effects. Is the proliferation of practitioners this jumped on the train without the requisite strategies.

The second is place hype generated by this quite recent Treatment approach.

An example recently would be headline in an Australian newspaper, "A "MIRACLE" cutting-edge stem cell operation may contain saved Sharks forward Anthony Tupou's career. "

In case you aren't going to up on rugby, Anthony Tupou the former star in this online game. He underwent a stem cell procedure involving the goal of fat-derived stem cells of a knee issue. And this action has apparently resurrected his career.

Dr. Paul Annett, athletic physician, raised an interesting counterpoint during his blog. He quite rightly realized that many procedures performed in the market of sports medicine are performed because they "might be helpful" consequently are relatively innocuous.

He then posits that "there are many potential reasons this procedure may to your advantage to some patients, perhaps the 'placebo effect', the normal fluctuation from arthritic disease or some mechanical consequence of the injection itself. Anthony's knee could actually feel better as he an off-season without running!

And he then procedes say, "The ethical way of getting around this is for the proponents of this manner of perform some randomised double-blind health trials (the 'gold standard' of the studies) to rigorously go into the relative benefits... "

And I NEED couldn't agree more. Since there is abundant anecdotal evidence the particular procedures have benefit, you won't notice any rigorous double-blind controlled samples. The reasons are probably two parts.

First, it's difficult to add a biotech or pharmaceutical company to fund a study involving the aid of a patient's own body cellular material. Where's the profit?

The second is always that the process of getting grants from institutions similar to the reduction National Institutes of Health (NIH) or a Arthritis Foundation in out your U. S. is very first arduous.

At our center we have done what we rrs not going to to systematize the procedure extremely document various measures to keep while uncontrolled, there set in least data collection being carried out. (Wei N, Beard D, Delauter S, Bitner D, Gillis R, Rau L, Miller C, Clark L. Guided Mesenchymal Stem Cell Layering Strategy of Treatment of OsteoArthritis to your respective Knee. J Applied Ers. 2011; 11: 44-48)

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