Stem cell therapy could stop osteoarthritis developing in someone who has suffered a joint injury. This form of the condition is known as post-traumatic arthritis (PTA) and it is very common for anyone who has injured a joint, perhaps an ankle or a knee playing sport, to go on to develop PTA.
At the moment there is no treatment that can halt PTA after a joint injury but new research does offer some hope now to sufferers, identifying a type of stem cell therapy that could be used after a joint injury to halt the progression of osteoarthritis.
The research team from Duke University Health System, in North Carolina, instigated a study using mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), very rare bone marrow cells that don’t become part of the blood. The cells were then implanted into mice that had the sort of fractures that usually lead to arthritis.
Their results, published in the journal Cell Transplantation, revealed that the stem cells did indeed stop PTA developing by affecting the joint inflammation and also by having positive benefits on other parts of the body.
The study used mice specially bred for their super-healing properties and the expectation was that the stem cells from these mice would work more effectively to protect against arthritis. To the research team’s surprise, however, they discovered delivering the same amount of ordinary stem cells to the joints had precisely the same effect in preventing arthritis. This suggests that even people not known to be quick healers could benefit from stem cell therapy after a joint injury and potentially avoid or at least slow down the progression of PTA.
The Duke researchers concluded that the introduction of the stem cells had an effect on the inflammation around a fractured joint, changing the bone’s response when healing.
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