Injectable cell therapy regenerates arthritic knees

The study size was small but results were highly promising

Author

Longevity Hound
April 23, 2023

Scientists massaged and manipulated a patient’s own cells to cope with the inflammatory environment in the synovial fluid

What's the news: A new injectable cell therapy regenerates arthritic joints.

Why should we believe it: This news comes from a study published only last week in Science Advances, and performed by scientists at Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine.

The study started off with an observation: Our joints normally have the ability to self-repair. But something goes wrong in the case of osteoarthritis. The scientists looked closer and found that in osteoarthritis, the synovial fluid — the thick liquid between joints — creates an inflammatory environment that hamstrings the body's natural joint-repair mechanism.

The scientists then came up with a novel cell therapy. Basically, they took cells from people with knee osteoarthritis. They massaged and manipulated those cells to make them resistant to the inflammatory environment in the patients' own joints. And then they injected those cells back into the patients' knees. Result:

  • Significant improvements in arthritis symptoms and pain levels

  • Significant improvements in quality of life and recreational activities

  • Restoration of cartilage tissue in the knee

Why this is a big deal: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently named osteoarthritis as an epidemic. The disease affects 520 million people worldwide. To date, no effective treatments are known.

A simple injection described in this study, given just once or twice, which significantly improves arthritis pain and regenerates cartilage would be a giant boon, and could improve the quality of life for hundreds of millions of people.

So what specifically can you do now: The current study was complex. The work was performed in cell tissues, live rats, and humans. But the numbers of those humans were small — only 9 osteoarthritis patients.

While the results are highly promising, this treatment will have to be studied further in larger numbers of people. In other words, you will still have to wait for this to become available at your local hospital, unless you're willing to travel to Winston-Salem, NC, and ask these scientists to inject you directly.