Stem Cells May Repair Cartilage in Osteoarthritis Patients
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Listen to this folks: stem cells may be able to repair the damaged cartilage in osteoarthritis sufferers.
Wouldn’t that be the day?! Definitely a lot better than what the chondroitin-glucosamine tandem have done in both repair and un-repair (!) of the cartilage.
Scientists at Cardiff University have successfully identified stem cells within articular cartilage of adults, which although it cannot become any cell in the body like full stem cells, has the ability to derive into chondrocytes – the cells that make up the body’s cartilage — in high enough numbers to make treatment a realistic possibility. The team have even been able to identify the cells in people over 75 years of age.
This is one of the things I am loving about stem cell therapy, despite the controversy behind it — is its potential to treat or reverse serious conditions, especially one as debilitating as arthritis.
More of the said report from Science Daily:
The research team, funded by the Arthritis Research Campaign and the Swiss AO Foundation, have identified a progenitor, or a partially derived stem cell in bovine cartilage that can be turned into can be turned into a chondrocyte in culture. Their breakthrough came in identifying a similar cell in human cartilage that was more like a stem cell with characteristics that they could be used to treat cartilage lesions due to trauma but also mark the onset of osteoarthritis
Lead researcher Professor Charlie Archer from the Cardiff School of Biosciences said: “We have identified a cell which when grown in the lab can produce enough of a person’s own cartilage that it could be effectively transplanted. There are limitations in trying to transplant a patient’s existing cartilage cells but by culturing it from a resident stem cell we believe we can overcome this limitation.
You have to agree, that this one study,who results are worth watching out for. I just hope it won’t take them too long to validate the potential of stem cells against arthritis.
HART still has a lot of work to do ... if you see something that is broken, please bring it to his attention via contact page or inside Facebook! Thanks :D
That’s wonderful! They’re coming up with some great innovations in treatment these days–like I recently discovered a natural joint cream for some of the aches and pains I get–it’s called Joint Medic. Some of my friends have much worse, arthritic pain, and I’ll be sure to tell them about the stem cell treatments.