The Positive Effects of Stem Cell Therapy on Osteoarthritis

Knee osteoarthritis is a chronic disease that continues to affect many individuals every year. The cartilage substance inside the knee experiences wear and tear which may cause the person to feel uncomfortable symptoms like pain, stiffness, and tenderness.

According to Osteoarthritis and Cartilage Journal (oarsijournal.com), by the year 2030, 67 million people will start to suffer from knee osteoarthritis. There is no current treatment available that can reverse the condition, but drugs and physiotherapy will only provide temporary relief.

Several cases that have been reported where surgical procedures are needed and even that solution won't guarantee 100% chances of success and the procedure also comes with many complications and high costs.

In the field of regeneration medicine, especially stem cell therapy, promising results were achieved that can help in knee osteoarthritis treatment through the various studies and experiments that have been conducted.

Homeopathic and medicinal advancements are welcome to be used but with these recent findings, stem cell therapy in Vacaville can become a new and effective treatment that could help fight knee osteoarthritis.

How Mesenchymal Stem Cells Work

The main use of stem cells is to encourage or facilitate the internal healing process inside the knee joint cartilage, which can help a patient be relieved of the osteoarthritic symptoms.

Stem cell therapy can be used in combination with other treatments, physiotherapy and exercise, to improve the patient's quality of life and raise their functional status.

Researchers started using multipotent adult MSCs that can be found in several tissues and can differentiate themselves into chondrogenic materials. According to studies, these mesenchymal stem cells can be cultured in labs without affecting their ability to differentiate into usable materials.

In addition, these stem cells have proven that they can differentiate themselves both inside and outside vitro. Although MSCs can be collected from the adipose tissue, bone marrow, deciduous teeth, skeletal muscle, trabecular bone and many other areas of the body, the best and most potent form is actually harvested from part of the umbilical cord also known as Wharton's Jelly.

Once they have been collected, the MSCs can help regenerate essential materials like bone, cartilage, ligaments, tendons, and muscles, among many others. Mesenchymal stem cells are showing promises that they can help with the pain and reverse signs of arthritis and osteoarthritis.

There have been useful characterized factors that can be useful in treating arthritis which includes bone morphogenic protein, fibroblast growth factors, hedgehog proteins, insulin growth factor, transforming growth factor, and Wingless proteins.

These materials can help stimulate anabolic activity and signal downstream processes that can promote cell growth, survival, and proliferation including reduced apoptotic signaling.

FGF2 and transforming growth factor can lead to positive differentiation. Additionally, the methods that were used didn't show signs of fibrinogenesis, hypertrophy, and ossification. The delivery system can also aim for target cells that doesn't slow down chondrogenic differentiation or compromise the integrity of the tissue.

Clinical Trials

There have been several clinical trials done for MSCs and their potency in treating osteoarthritis and the results are a success!

Therapeutic suggestions that involves the use of stem cells hold a great advantage over traditional surgery wherein there's no need for cartilage biopsy. This means that there won't be extra cellular damage or external stress to it.

The thought of having an advanced knee osteoarthritis be treated with just a single injection has appealed to both patients and clinics as well.

Patient Stem Cells

To circumvent the graft against host disease, mesenchymal stem cells and platelet-rich plasma are collected straight from the patient. The cells will be sent and processed to specialized laboratories before they will be re-injected into the knee joint of the patient.

The harvested cells of the patient are evaluated and studied for helping with cartilage build-up, type 2 collagen and glycosaminoglycan deposition, and chondrogenic activity before they will be re-injected.

The MSCs will also be scrutinized in vitro to find out how well they could differentiate under certain conditions. Glycosaminoglycan and type 2 collagen are both important components that aides in MSC differentiation into chondrocytes.

It's worth noting that stress on the knees should as little as possible because the newly formed cartilage is still vulnerable and fragile during this time. Most clinics should recommend unloading knee braces when needed to ensure the success of the treatment.

It's also important that the patient who had just undergone stem cell therapy should stay away from any strenuous physical activity for 1 week after the injection so that stress in the affected joints can be prevented.

MSCs can be used in many different ways like turning them into progenitor cells that can initiate cartilage implantation to fix the osteochondral and chondral lesions, or maybe even create bioactive factors that encourage the affected joint to be treated using regenerative action.