On November 4, Messi showed up at a specialized medical facility on the streets of Madrid to receive stem cell treatment. Only seven days after the treatment, Messi flew from Europe to Uruguay, South America, to represent the national team again on the field, thus proving the effect of stem cell treatment.
Long-term training and events in various sports have the most direct impact on athletes in the form of various knee injuries. According to foreign media reports, Crowe and Pau Gasol have also been cured of injuries through stem cells. Stem cell therapy can allow players to restore damaged tendons, muscles and other recovery, so that the damaged parts of the recovery, to extend the sports career of athletes, and without any sequelae.
The knee, as the mainstay of the lower limb, is the largest and most complex joint in the human body, bearing weight and moving functions, while the cartilage covering it assumes the role of absorbing pressure and reducing friction.
Although the knee cartilage is strong, but long-term weight bearing and frequent friction, knee cartilage is easy to be worn out, knee joint strain, that is, the most common daily degenerative knee joint lesions!
Degenerative joint disease of the knee, also known as osteoarthritis, osteoarthrosis, degenerative joint disease, senile arthritis, etc., is a common knee joint to the destruction of articular cartilage and articular margins and subchondral osteophytes as a characteristic of chronic osteoarthritic diseases, with a certain degree of disability.
Knee degeneration is associated with aging, inflammation, joint overuse, trauma, obesity, and genetics. As of 2021, knee degeneration is the fourth most disabling disease.
Degenerative knee disease is also known as the "cancer that won't die" because it is difficult and painful to treat. Early clinical manifestations are:
1, pain
Most of the patients' pain is mild and moderate, mostly dull pain, accompanied by a sense of heaviness, acidity, bloating, stagnation, and discomfort with activities for the first diagnosis.
2, swelling
Some patients have swollen joints, and repeated episodes.
3. Deformity
The knee joint may appear inward or outward deformity, and the bone edge of the joint is enlarged. Some patients can not completely straighten the knee joint, and in severe cases, the knee joint is flexion contracture deformity.
4, dysfunction
Abnormal rhythm of movement: weight-bearing joints can appear to play soft legs, joint activities have popping sound, friction sound, strangulation.
Weakness of locomotor ability: joint stiffness, instability, reduced range of motion of flexion and extension, walking, squatting, up and down steps.
At present, there are many kinds of conventional clinical treatments for early osteoarthritis of the knee, which can be treated with medication, physiotherapy, minimally invasive, surgical arthroplasty, etc.
One of the patients is a patient with osteoarthritis.
Some patients choose surgical replacement when their condition gradually deteriorates. However, after surgical replacement, because the cartilage tissue of the knee joint has no blood vessels, no nerves, and no lymphatic return, it is easy to have wound infection, deep vein embolism, and other complications after surgery. At the same time, the only cartilage tissue is highly differentiated, which is not able to promote the composition of the articular cartilage matrix, and the cartilage repair of the new tissues is mostly fibrocartilage, which has poorer function than normal cartilage, resulting in the limitation of the surgical effect of time, and can't be cured once and for all.
Stem cell injection therapy involves the injection of structurally and functionally normal stem cells into the joint cavity to repair knee injuries and improve clinical symptoms.
It is mainly used for the treatment of degenerative or repetitive trauma-induced knee joint lesions and remodeling of damaged knee joints.
Stem cells are a class of multipotential cells that have the ability to replicate themselves. Under certain conditions, it can be differentiated into a variety of functional cells. It has the potential to regenerate various tissues and organs and the human body, which is called "universal cell" in the medical field.
The self-differentiation, replication, proliferation, and renewal of stem cells can repair irregular bone defects and cartilage defects, promote meniscus and bone volume increase, accelerate the healing of incomplete tears of tendon ligaments, and improve the function of the joints very effectively, and can be the fundamental treatment of knee joint degeneration.
Stem cells can secrete a large number of growth factors to promote the repair of the tissue itself, and at the same time secrete active factors to promote the cell matrix components and angiogenesis, improve the microcirculation in the joint cavity.
The immune factors secreted by stem cells can indirectly regulate dendritic cells and natural killer cells, inhibit the proliferation of T-lymphocytes, prevent T-cell reaction and increase the secretion of anti-inflammatory factors, reduce the interaction between immune cells in the local microenvironment of the joint cavity, promote the absorption of inflammatory edema, and alleviate the pain symptoms.
On August 23, 2021, a team of South Korean researchers announced the filing of a New Drug Application (NDA) for the development of the world's first autologous stem cell drug for the treatment of severe osteoarthritis with a single intra-articular injection, which has been named "Jointstem". If the application goes well, it is expected to be approved for marketing in Korea next year.
It is reported that the research and development cycle of JointStem is 16 years, and the drug has already undergone Phase 1, 2 (approved in 2008), 2b (approved in 2014) and Phase 3 clinical trials.
The Phase 2 clinical trials have been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration and successfully implemented.
Phase 3 of the study was approved in South Korea in 2019, through all 13 hospitals including Kyung Hee University Hospital in Gangdong and a total of ****252 patients participated in the successful Phase 3 clinical trial on May 17, 2021.
Phase 3 clinical studies of the drug have shown that stem cell therapy improves knee function, reduces pain, and regenerates knee cartilage.
Currently, national and international research teams are applying MSCs from different tissue sources to the clinical treatment of arthritis, and have achieved significant results.
Relevant representative clinical trial results
Currently, according to the National Drug Administration (NMPA), *** there are three new stem cell drugs for knee osteoarthritis that have received clinical approvals.
Stem cell therapy allows patients to grow back knee cartilage cells, making degenerative arthritis a reversible disease.
In 2007, Liu Ruoying was examined and found to have "bilateral patellar luxation", and she tried various methods to treat her injured knees.
In 2012, at the suggestion of her doctor, she tried autologous stem cell infusion. She wrote in her microblog, "I've tried everything in the world for my knee. Recently there is a way to draw blood from my own arteries and then culture autologous cells before hitting them back into my knee, which I started to treat."
Chinese star Wu Jing has also suffered from injuries and illnesses because of his long history of action movies: arthritis in the knee is a problem that has long plagued Wu Jing. In order to get well soon, Wu Jing traveled to Japan in 2017 to get stem cell injections to treat his knee arthritis and recovered well.
In December 2017, 70-year-old Liu, who has a nearly 10-year history of osteoarthritis, received knee suprapatellar bursa injections of mesenchymal stem cell therapy, conscious pain disappeared significantly, the leg activity function improved significantly, and the quality of sleep and the mental state have improved significantly. This case was reported in Pengcheng Evening News under the title of "MSC Transplantation Technology Creates Miracle of Life".
Stem cell therapy, as a third-generation disease treatment pathway following drug intervention and surgical intervention, has become a hotspot for scientists from all countries in the 21st century, and will bring a brighter future for human health.