How can stem cells help arthritis

Treating OA with stem cells is still experimental under study. In Alberta, using stem cells to treat OA only happens in research studies. More research is needed before stem cells can become a standard treatment for OA. Researchers are studying stem cells to find out:.

Researchers can easily collect them from fat or bone marrow. MSCs are able to turn into cartilage, bone, muscle, tendon, ligaments, or fat, depending on the type of tissue that surrounds them.

Research shows that MSCs release anti-inflammatory factors that help heal and lessen pain. When they are injected into a joint, some studies show they may help relieve pain, swelling, and loss of movement. Stem cells can also be used to make an artificial tissue in a lab through a process called tissue engineering.

This lab-made tissue can then be put into a joint to help rebuild repair damaged bone, ligaments, and cartilage. There are possible risks when donor stem cells are used. These risks include:. If you decide to have a stem cell treatment for OA, you will need to have follow-up to watch for unwanted side effects. By the end of the year-long study, the team found that there was a significant reduction in pain and an increase in self-reported quality of life. The participants tolerated all three doses well, and there were no serious adverse events.

Those who received the highest doses experienced the most positive results. There was a significant reduction in inflammation within the knee joints of the participants, which is important because experts now consider inflammation to be an important driver of osteoarthritis. The authors write:. In fact, the authors believe that much of the pain relief might be due to this anti-inflammatory response. As they were carrying out a pilot study, the scientists only recruited a small group of participants.

Researchers will need to carry out much larger trials before it is possible to use the technique in real-world patients. It is also worth noting that although the intervention reduced pain and inflammation, the scientists did not detect any cartilage regrowth, which some earlier trials have reported.

This finding, the authors believe, might be because the trial only included participants with end-stage osteoarthritis. Also, the pilot study was open-label, meaning that both the researchers and the participants knew who was receiving which dosage.

However, reservations aside, the investigators did not design the study to offer conclusive evidence that the method is effective. Instead, it acts as a stepping stone toward future endeavors. Also, this is not the first time that researchers have pitted stem cells against osteoarthritis.

A study with 60 participants reached similar conclusions. We look forward to larger scale trial results. If more extensive projects can replicate the benefits that these small-scale preliminary studies have revealed, stem cells could become the future of osteoarthritis treatment.

These treatments generally use mesenchymal stromal cells MSCs , which can also be referred to as mesenchymal stem cells. These cells, however, are often a mixed population of cells from blood, fat, and bone marrow, with little, if any, indication that they include live stem cells. After being collected from a patient, these mixed populations of cells can either be injected directly back into the same patient, or grown in a laboratory and processed to select for a specific subpopulation before injection.

Lab-grown cells have been shown to have anti-inflammatory properties and to stimulate other cells to improve tissue repair in certain early clinical studies. Clinical trials are ongoing to test the regenerative capabilities of these cells. These cells often are uncharacterized, and their identity and regenerative capacity are unknown.

The biological properties and therapeutic potential of cells from both of these preparations are controversial and require substantial additional scientific research.

The potential to use these poorly defined cells for OA primarily has been explored to treat small, focal defects in the joint surface cartilage, and not for the more generalized cartilage loss and joint damage seen in osteoarthritis. Importantly, current approaches have not been shown to regenerate cartilage. There is a lack of clear support from high-quality studies, and a lack of consensus in the scientific and medical communities around many aspects of using cell therapies to treat OA, including when stem cells should be used, the ideal source of stem cells, and how they should be prepared, defined, or delivered.

These unregulated and unproven approaches are not only ineffective, but they can cause both physical and financial harm. Patients who are exploring clinical trials should note that trial entry into common registries, such as ClinicalTrials. The effects and effectiveness of cell therapies for the treatment of OA in humans remain unproven and the scientific community cannot recommend them at this time. The three identified studies included only a small number of patients and used different methodologies, which prevents direct comparison between studies.

The field needs standardized methods, properly controlled studies, and more robust clinical trials in order to determine if cell therapy is safe and effective for treating the disease. An overview Osteoarthritis OA is a degenerative joint disease that affects millions of people worldwide. In this section: What is osteoarthritis?

How is osteoarthritis treated? How are stem cells used to understand osteoarthritis? What is the potential for stem cells to treat osteoarthritis? What is the clinical status of cell-based therapies for osteoarthritis?