Stem Cell Therapy

[martyg]

Would love to know of any first hand accounts out there, if there are any. Lining up the various appointments now. Would love to know if it made a difference for you. Thanks in advance.

 

[Pat AKA mustski]

I have looked into this a bit for my hubby. This thread talks about it some:
https://www.pugski.com/threads/stem-cell-injections-for-the-knees.5708/

 

[Unpiste]

Here's one: Three blinded after dubious stem cell treatment injected into their eyeballs. I'd also give this a read.

I'd recommend doing thorough research to understand exactly what you're getting into before even stepping foot into a clinic. From what I've heard, much of what's out there has more in common with cosmetic surgery than anything resembling a proven medical treatment.

I have nothing against this sort of treatment and I'd be happy to be proven wrong, but my understanding is that there are no legitimate, clinically proven stem cell therapies that have progressed past the trial stage at this point. Certainly, if anyone starts making claims that they can't back up with actual clinical data, I'd walk out the door and never look back.

 

[HardDaysNight]

Here's one: Three blinded after dubious stem cell treatment injected into their eyeballs. I'd also give this a read.

I'd recommend doing thorough research to understand exactly what you're getting into before even stepping foot into a clinic. From what I've heard, much of what's out there has more in common with cosmetic surgery than anything resembling a proven medical treatment.

I have nothing against this sort of treatment and I'd be happy to be proven wrong, but my understanding is that there are no legitimate, clinically proven stem cell therapies that have progressed past the trial stage at this point. Certainly, if anyone starts making claims that they can't back up with actual clinical data, I'd walk out the door and never look back.

This!!! The absence of any significant positive results in the few well-designed studies that have been conducted doesn’t bode well, at least at this stage of development.

 

[Rod9301]

Not exactly true.

There was a study in Spain {itrt i believe} a few years ago, with cultured stem cells that showed improvement in 80 percent, using before and after mris.

Cultured means cells extracted from bone marrow, then put in a solution to multiply for a few weeks, 3 i think

This is not allowed in the us.

I had that done 2 years ago and i had improvement.

They went from 500k to 40 million cells.

Regenex, based near Boulder, does this in the Cayman facility

I think they are the most reliable.

 

[Gary Stolt]

A friend had stem cells injected in his knee. He is very happy with the result so far - probably about 2 - 3 months. He is too young for a knee replacement, hence the stem cells. FYI, insurance did not pay for the injection.
good luck.

 

[HardDaysNight]

Yes, there is such a claim promoted by a group called Kenko I think. I’ve not found any actual publication of the methods, design or analysis of this study, so I can’t really evaluate its merits. It’s certainly more plausible that treatments with proliferated stem cells (i.e., millions of cells rather than the few thousands that can be directly extracted from a patient’s marrow) might be more effective. In the US, the FDA determined that such in vitro proliferation constituted a drug equivalent and required its practitioners to file a NDA with supporting clinical trial data. This they declined to do.

Interestingly when one clicks on this thread a pop-up ad appears promoting “the cheapest stem cells in the world” at a clinic in Medellin, Colombia! I don’t know that I’d do that.

 

[martyg]

A friend had stem cells injected in his knee. He is very happy with the result so far - probably about 2 - 3 months. He is too young for a knee replacement, hence the stem cells. FYI, insurance did not pay for the injection.
good luck.

Thanks. This is the kind of info that I am looking on looking for.

If your friend is comfortable with it, I’d love to connect with them about the realities that they experienced. Just PM me.

Thanks again.

 

[martyg]

Not exactly true.

There was a study in Spain {itrt i believe} a few years ago, with cultured stem cells that showed improvement in 80 percent, using before and after mris.

Cultured means cells extracted from bone marrow, then put in a solution to multiply for a few weeks, 3 i think

This is not allowed in the us.

I had that done 2 years ago and i had improvement.

They went from 500k to 40 million cells.

Regenex, based near Boulder, does this in the Cayman facility

I think they are the most reliable.

Thanks. I will look into. I asked my contacts at USOPC for a short list of facilities and this one did not come up.

 

[Tom K.]

Would love to know of any first hand accounts out there, if there are any. Lining up the various appointments now. Would love to know if it made a difference for you. Thanks in advance.

I've got a friend in Steamboat that went the Regenex route in the Caymans for back and hip issues. Mixed results. If you PM me, I'd be glad to put you in touch with him. Good guy. Long-time ski instructor, bike racer, etc.

 

[Unpiste]

I took a look at Regenexx's website out of curiosity. This is where they lose me:

Bone-marrow Stem Cells

Stem cells are cells that can turn into other types of cells and can also orchestrate a repair response. As such, they work as your body’s primary means of repairing damage. There are different types of stem cells, but for treating orthopedic injuries, the only one with demonstrated efficacy is mesenchymal stem cells (MSC).

Based on our extensive experience, the most effective MSCs are derived from bone marrow. These cells can turn into bone, cartilage, muscle, tendons, or ligaments. Regenexx draws bone marrow from your hip bones, processes it in our lab to derive 5-20 times more stem cells per unit volume injected than can be achieved by a bedside centrifuge machine most physicians use.

Now, my relative layman's understanding of the field is that the stem cells found in bone marrow normally differentiate into the various kinds of cells found in blood, not bone, cartilage, muscle, tendons, or ligaments. What this implies is that Regenexx has found a way to reliably reverse differentiation in the stem cells found in bone marrow, but, to my knowledge, this has not actually been achieved in a verifiable manner. This is indeed somewhat of the holy grail in the field, but the only results I'm aware of claiming this result could not be replicated by other research groups.

The entire goal of stem cell therapies is the inject stem cells into damaged tissue, with the hope that they will then colonize and regrow that tissue, forming the correct cell types and structure in the process. The danger is that the injected cells do colonize the tissue, but don't produce the correct type of cell or correct structure. If that isn't scary, ask yourself: What do we normally call a mass of tissue growing in an abnormal manner?

What I see when I visit Regenexx's website is a lot of shiny marketing, with surprisingly little actual data available on what they do or even what results their patient have seen. (For instance, the link under "Patient Outcomes Database" actually leads to a page called "Physician Expertise and Training".) This does not look like a company I would trust with my health, let alone my ability to ski.

Again, I have no personal stake in this, I just don't want to see someone here get themselves hurt and I'm a little concerned at how easily the warnings earlier in this thread were glossed over.

 

[Prosper]

@martyg I had a stem cell and platelet rich plasma injection in my knee about 2 years ago. The stem cells came were harvested rom my hip. I’m happy to share my experience with you. Send me a PM.

 

[Henry]

A friend had stem cells injected in his knee. He is very happy with the result so far - probably about 2 - 3 months.

Too soon to tell. The processed injectables that claim to contain stem cells may have cells that get killed when the fluid was processed to prevent infection or rejection. It still contains some growth factors that will provide relief for a few months. One of the guys I ski with had exactly that result--a few months of relief, then back to the same old pain.

Veterinarians have injected stem cells into animals for years. A local vet sends tissue (I don't know what) from a critter to a lab that cultures it to increase the volume. Then the material is injected back into the same animal. Works well, but expensive so it's not widely used. That same vet had her own bone marrow stem cells injected into her knees, but her knees were too deteriorated for the injections to work. She really needed two new knees, but the surgeon wants her to lose 100# first; that's a problem.

 

[Tom K.]

@martyg I had a stem cell and platelet rich plasma injection in my knee about 2 years ago. The stem cells came were harvested rom my hip. I’m happy to share my experience with you. Send me a PM.

@Prosper, generally thumbs up or down, if you'd care to share.

Thanks.

 

[Ski&ride]

Stem cell treatments had not been vigorously tested in clinical trials. But that doesn’t mean they don’t work. It’s just you don’t really know it does, or not. Not even the doctors know for sure.

So basically, you’re participating in a clinical trial. Even though your results are typically not compiled into trial data.

That said, if it doesn’t work at all, no doctor will bother to even try it. So far, out on the field, there’re some positive results, for some. But because patients are so willing to pay out of their own pocket to be in the “trials”, there’s little incentive to actually prove it works! Or even to research exactly how well it work, and to which condition!

Once you accept it’s unproven, you can make your own decision.

If you do go ahead, choose your doctor very carefully. Remember, doctors are supposed to “do no harm”. Majority of doctors are honest. So the worst is you wasted a few thousand $. However, if you have any doubt about a doctor, go somewhere else.

 

[Prosper]

Here's what I posted about my results from the treatment which was done 2 years ago. The post is from Oct 2018 which was 1 year after treatment.

I have pretty severe knee arthritis due to a very unusual fungal infection that likely occurred during ACL and meniscus repair that were torn while skiing in 2010. After 2 additional arthroscopies and 2 years after the initial surgery the fungus was diagnosed. I had a 4th knee surgery in the span of 3 years to scrape out all the infected bone and remove infected soft tissue including cartilage. The fungus destroyed just about all my meniscus and most of the cartilage. Almost exactly a year ago I had a autologous stem cell injection w/ PRP into my knee. It felt a little better for the 1st couple of months. I had post-procedure MRIs done at 3 and 6 months without any additional cartilage growth. Skied about 25 days last season and knee was pretty sore most of the season, maybe a little worse than the season before the procedure. Today, the knee feels a little worse than pre-stem cell. One my practice partners has a patient that had a shoulder stem cell injection who showed cartilage grown on a post-procedure MRI. Not sure how much and how many months post-procedure though. I’ve had patients who have had stem cell injection who have had improvement in pain and others who have not. Seems like a bit of a crap shoot overall.

 

[Mike King]

At the end of the 2018 season, I had a ski release resulting in sending me into a tree at high speed. As a result, I aggravated the osteoarthritis in my right knee. I continued to ski for several days, with increasing discomfort. After the season ended, my knee continued to deteriorate, with cycling becoming quite uncomfortable. After a bit of consultation with my PT, I decided to get PRP (platelet rich plasma) injections. The doctor I selected had had good results according to the patients my PT had observed.

He harvested platelets and injected them using ultrasound to guide the needle. Also using ultrasound, he performed hydrodisection of some of the tissue that had started to calcify. I was in a brace for a couple of weeks with very limited ability to flex, and flexion was added slowly. A program of rehabilitation was undertaken.

Ultimately, my knee has recovered quite well, probably close to what I had before the accident. Whether the improvement is due to the PRP procedure, the hydrodisection (I had probably 3-4 of those), or the time off and rehab, who knows. But I think it was a factor in my recovery.

One thing I will say is that it does matter that your doctor is qualified to do this work. And as far as I know, the best folk in the field are at Centeno Schultz. My provide (Dr. Mazzollo) is not there, but has been trained there. But I'd be wary of a lot of the run of the mill folk offering PRP/stem cell treatments. The benefit of Centeno Schultz is that they account for the largest amount of peer reviewed literature in the field and it is evident from the number of physicians there doing fellowships.

https://centenoschultz.com

Mike