Stem Cell Knee Injection may Reduce Pain, Regenerate Tissue

Stem-cells are simply magical when it comes to the world of medical science, and a recent study involving a stem cell injection for pain relief and tissue regeneration in the knee shows their inner workings in action.

"There was evidence of meniscus regeneration and improvement in knee pain following treatment with allogeneic human mesenchymal stem cells," C. Thomas Vangsness Jr., M.D., and colleagues wrote, via a press release. "These results support the study of human mesenchymal stem cells for the apparent knee-tissue regeneration and protective effects."

For the study, Vangsness and colleagues studied 55 patients at seven institutions who underwent partial medial meniscectomy-a surgery used to treat torn knee cartilage-and received study treatment 7 to 10 days following a superolateral knee injection.

The participants were divided into several groups, including Group A, which received of 50×10⁶ allogeneic mesenchymal stem cells, Group B, which received 150×10⁶ allogeneic mesenchymal stem cells, and Group C - the control group - which received a sodium hyaluronate injection.

Just a year following the treatments, results showed that meniscal volume had increase for Group A by 24 percent and Group B at 6 percent. Unfortunately Group C did not achieve significant change in meniscal volume, according to background information from the study. Groups A and B also reported having less pain than Group C, based on VAS scores. However, findings also showed that these scores improved slightly for all at baseline.

More information regarding the study can be found via the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery