Hey guys, so today in class on the arthitis discussion, our first lay article discussed the woman who had the platelet- rich plasma therapy done on both of her knees. We all were curious as to exactly what the goal of it was and what not so I decided to do a quick search and see what basics came up on the subject. So when searching it one of the frist results led me to a site about the Orthohealing Center, it has some interesting stuff on the site (Link at the end). So they claim the PRP is a a way to heal tendon injuries and osteoarthiritis without a significant risk. Well in my point of view they still do not have good explanations or studies proving that this is not a significant risk to the patient. The main aspect of the platelet they are looking at is the many growth factors they have and their ability to help in wound healing. The goal is to gather many growth factors to enhacne and accelarate healing but I am not sure how well it really works or safe it is, I would still be tenative to do this. What they are now trying to do is specifically isolate certain proteins to help healing and decrease inflammation. Since they use the patients own blood they explain how you cannot just use anybodys platelets to do the procedure. I would suggest clicking on the link within here to cytokine therapy, it is within the text and is kind of interesting. It basically discusses how everyone reacts differently to the procedure and therefore they uses cytokines to help drive the PRP and either increase or decrease the rate of someones healing based on how they are reacting to the procedure. Overall I found it interesting that this PRP therapy is more out there than I thought it was considering I was not completely aware of this therapy until reading the article for today.
Hope you guys find this interesting in some way!
Link: http://www.orthohealing.com/plateletrichplasmatherapy-prp/
Michele J
Yeah, I get the feeling this is kind of a "shot in the dark" approach. A similar approach was taken in early tissue engineering stem cell therapy. Cells were just injected in the site of interest, difference is that there may not be any growth factors in joints (I'm not sure). Also, as mentioned in lass yesterday, there may be some more long term damaging effects. More research is definitely needed.
ReplyDeleteI've had 2 PRP injections 6 wks apart on one
ReplyDeleteknee that was so bad I had to have help even
getting in a wheelchair....I was 69 then...70
now.....It helped 80%, but it took about 2 months before I got the good results. You cannot take anti-inflamatories 2 wks prior or
2 mos after or be on blood thinners. Medicare wouldn't pay so it was out of pocket
a thousand dollors for 2, but in my opinion it now allows me to walk again.
I think this area of health-science is really cool. Where we force our bodys to form specific reactions, to either heal or maybe grow stronger. Utilizing our own blood can be tricky. From getting an ABO and Rh match, to trusting our WBC to recognize the foregien injections as real. I would like to see if anyone actually rejected platelets before, or what the procedures are to ensure no-one develops Grath Vs. Host type diseases. I have read though that for example, Bone Marrow Transplants, if done right can help cure diseases such as Sickle Cell, Leukemia, and Aplastic Anemia. Which is awesome! Maybe there could be a way to trigger our own bone marrow to produce more platelets, because the next articles describe how platelets activate our tendon to promote grow factors. In this URAL article, http://www.wral.com/lifestyles/healthteam/story/7795081/, the author insists that the platelets somehow activate grow factors in the tendons to heal tennis elbow and jumper's knee, but doesn't show it biochemically how it is activated. The next article goes more indepth in that topic.
ReplyDeleteIn this, eothropod article, the author calls the treament tendon stem cell therapy. In their study, "they found that the platelet-rich plasma did indeed cause tendon stem cells to form into tenocytes." (http://www.eorthopod.com/content/how-does-plateletrich-plasma-help-tendons-repair). Preforming gene analysis, they examined the produced cells in the damaged tendons and figured our how many and the type of cells forming. I think the latter article is better referenced for a website, and rasies good questions at the end.