The Beneficial Effects Of Stem Cell Therapy On Osteoarthritis

Currently, stem cell therapy for joint injury treatment has been widely used in the world’s top athletes. For professional athletes, stem cell therapy can minimize their recovery time from injury. For the general population, the risk of developing osteoarthritis is also very high. A large number of patients with the disease are suffering from chronic pain and looking forward to better treatment.

Stem cell therapy could be a major way to treat osteoarthritis in the future.

Stem cell therapy helps:

Promote the formation of new cartilage tissue
Significantly reduce joint pain and stiffness
Control and slow down the progression of osteoarthritis
Improve joint flexibility
Reduce or eliminate joint inflammation
Effectively reduce the probability of knee replacement surgery
Decrease or elimination the dependence on anti-inflammatory medication
Great improvement of life quality

Osteoarthritis That Stem Cell Therapy Can Treat

Shoulder osteoarthritis
Knee osteoarthritis
Extremities Osteoarthritis, including finger and toe arthritis
Hip osteoarthritis
Spondylarthritis
Infectious arthritis
Tendinosis
Osteoarthritis caused by other diseases

Learn More About Osteoarthritis

Osteoarthritis is a degenerative joint disease, which is a type of arthritis with damage to the articular cartilage or the underlying bone. Common symptoms of osteoarthritis include joint pain and stiffness. Patients with mild disease cases have joint pain or impaired mobility of knee joints, while severe cases could lead to joint deformation or even disability, which greatly interferes with the normal work and daily life of the patients.

The development of osteoarthritis is closely related to articular cartilage cells. Articular cartilage is a layer of tissue about 3-5mm thick that covers the bones. It is mainly composed of collagen fibers, and its role is to secrete synovial fluid to protect the joints. It is an indispensable “buffer zone” between the bones, which can buffer the vibration and impact on bone by external force thus protecting bones from being worn and decreasing the pressure on joints. No matter walking, running, or jumping, the presence of cartilage helps to reduce vibration and friction in our joints. But since cartilage does not contain any blood vessels, its self-repair ability is very low, and it is difficult to fully regenerate after injury, and injured cartilage may continuously develop into osteoarthritis.

Risk Factors For Osteoarthritis

Risk factors that could lead to osteoarthritis include:

Genetics: This refers to a defect in a certain gene responsible for cartilage production in patients, which will lead to the development of defective cartilage eventually, resulting in accelerated degeneration of a bone joint. Those people are more prone to osteoarthritis than people with normal genetics.
Obesity: Being overweight will lead to larger pressure on the knee, hip, and spine cord joints, thus increasing the risk of osteoarthritis. Maintaining an ideal weight can effectively prevent osteoarthritis and losing weight can also limit further deterioration of osteoarthritis.
Injury: Trauma can also lead to the onset of osteoarthritis. For example, athletes with previous knee injuries possess a higher risk of knee osteoarthritis, people with back injuries are more likely to develop spinal osteoarthritis, and people with fracture history are prone to develop osteoarthritis in that certain joint.
Overuse: Excessive usage of a certain joint could increase the risk of osteoarthritis in that joint. For example, people with occupations that require repeat bending of knees have a higher risk of osteoarthritis on the knee than the general population.
Other diseases: Osteoarthritis can also be caused by other medical conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis caused by immune system defects, rheumatoid arthritis is also the second most common type of arthritis. Additionally, in some rare cases, too much growth hormone can increase the risk of osteoarthritis.

Clinical Symptoms Of Osteoarthritis

Joint pain and tenderness
Limited joint mobility
Swollen or deformed joints
Friction in bone
Joint weakness
Muscle atrophy
Back pain
Limb numbness

Stem Cell Therapy For Osteoarthritis At SQ1

Stem cell therapy for shoulder osteoarthritis

Shoulder osteoarthritis is a common type of osteoarthritis. Patients usually choose non-surgical measures to relieve symptoms, such as medication or physical therapy, but shoulder arthritis is a progressive joint disease that can’t be controlled by conservative treatments. In many cases, shoulder arthritis will advance to a point where it can only be treated with surgical procedures.

Shoulder surgery, as a treatment to help people get rid of should pain, comes with some innate risks, such as anesthesia reactions, blood clotting, muscle loss, and pain. Additionally, the surgery takes a longer time to recover, and patients may stay in the hospital for extended periods. The recovery from shoulder surgery is relatively slow and usually painful. It takes a few months for patients to be able to only use the shoulder with limited mobility. Once the healing begins, it may take weeks for rehabilitation. In many cases, patients might not be able to recover to the full mobility status of their shoulders.

Using stem cell therapy to treat shoulder arthritis is a new choice for many patients. The use of mesenchymal stem cells to treat shoulder arthritis can promote cartilage repair and regeneration, relieve, or eliminate shoulder inflammation, and restore shoulder joint function. The treatment with stem cells is with a short cycle and effective outcomes. Upon treatment, the patients were able to perform normal shoulder movements.

Stem cell therapy for knee arthritis

Knee osteoarthritis mostly occurs in middle-aged and elderly people as well as athletes. The disease usually manifests as knee joint swelling and pain, hardship when going up or downstairs, and knee discomfort when sitting, standing, and walking. Knee joint deformity and disability will develop if not treated in time. Other diseases like knee synovitis, ligament injury, meniscus injury, knee varus or valgus may also occur in the knee joint.

Treatment for knee osteoarthritis generally includes conservative medication treatment or surgical treatment. Medication cannot cure knee osteoarthritis. Like shoulder surgery, surgical treatment possesses high risks, long treatment time, and slow recovery. Unfortunately, patients who received shoulder surgery will not be able to recover to normal status anymore.

Treating knee osteoarthritis with stem cell therapy can relieve inflammation of the synovium or ligament, promote cartilage and ligament healing, and restore joint function. Scientific research and successful clinical cases have confirmed that the use of autologous bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells, adipose stem cells, bone marrow mononuclear cells, or allogeneic bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells are safe and effective for the treatment of osteoarthritis.

Advantages Of Stem Cell Therapy For Osteoarthritis

Conventional treatments for osteoarthritis include physical therapy (reduced exercises, crutches usage, etc.) and medications, which provide temporary pain relief and can’t repair damaged cartilage tissue. Joint replacement surgery is the only possible treatment for arthritis to deal with a damaged joint. But this method is risky and traumatic and may be accompanied by serious complications. Compared with these conventional therapeutical methods, stem cell therapy has incomparable advantages.

Stem cell therapy

Conventional treatment

Curative Treatment or diseases management

Stem cell therapy is a new treatment for osteoarthritis that aims to repair or regenerate cartilage tissue and help joints to return to a healthy status. If stem cell therapy is received at an early stage, the damage to the joint can be reversed and patients can eliminate drug dependence.

Including physical and medication therapies, which can relieve arthritic pain but cannot cure osteoarthritis completely. Medication dosage may increase over time and patients are prone to drug resistance. None of those methods can reverse or slow down the joint damage caused by osteoarthritis.

Dosage

The stem cell therapy is carried out by osteo and chondroblasts (stem cells of cartilage and bone tissue). After stem cells repair the cartilage tissue, the patients can reduce drug dosage. If the treatment is received at an early stage, the drug dependence can be eliminated/reversed. A stem cell expert will customize a specific plan based on your current disease status and other comorbidities to decide on the number, source of stem cells, as well as the duration of stem cell therapy.

Patients who are taking the drug will find the dose of the drug increase slowly and gradually, the treatment effect became weaker and limited, and the patients gradually develop resistance and require more powerful anti-inflammatory or other drugs.

Side-effects

There are no side effects since the stem cells come from the body itself, the immunogenicity is extremely low, and with a very strict quality control procedure, there are no side effects.

Anti-inflammatory drugs may have some side effects on the digestion and cardiovascular systems, such as nausea, stomach pain, abdominal discomfort, and allergies.

Convenience

Stem cell therapy is performed by stem cell experts and requires specialized laboratories to process stem cells. Corresponding medical equipment is also needed to extract and inject stem cells. Once the treatment is complete, there is no need for frequent or repeated treatment, patients can return to a high quality of life.

It’s relatively easy to routinely take medications, but the patient needs to take them repeatedly every day, which is prone to the development of medication drug dependence.

Longevity

If treated in the early stage, the drug dependence can be eliminated in long run and return to a healthy life with no longer joint pain and the effect is long-lasting. If treatment was conducted at a later stage, stem cell therapy can still reduce drug dependence, and in rare cases, you might need several treatment regimens.

The effect of drug treatment is short-term, and it is necessary to take or apply anti-inflammatory drugs every day as prescribed. The effectiveness of the medication is usually a few hours or a day, and the patients need that medication for life.

End-stage

Stem cells are the fundamental part of our body, the main function of stem cells is to regenerate and repair damaged cells, and produce new body cells thus repairing and regenerating cartilage tissue and delaying the necessity to conduct surgery.

Joint replacement surgery is the only treatment option for end-stage patients, but the high risk, surgical trauma, limited efficacy, and serious complications are important concerning factors.

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How Can Stem Cell Therapy For Osteoarthritis Work

Stem cells can be used to treat osteoarthritis by intravenous infusion or locally targeted transplantation. Stem cells can help treat osteoarthritis by playing the following roles:

Immune regulatory effect: Stem cells secrete anti-inflammatory factors thus inhibiting the activity of macrophages in the joint cavity and reducing the release of inflammatory factors thus inhibiting joint inflammation.

Differentiation potential: Mesenchymal stem cells can differentiate into chondrocytes to repair damaged cartilage tissue.
Promotion of cartilage growth: Stem cells promote the proliferation of cartilage cells by secreting growth factors and inhibit inflammation, apoptosis, or fibrosis in cartilage cells to prevent the destruction of cartilage tissue and reduce cartilage damage.

SQ1 Stem Cell Services

During the whole treatment process, we’ll provide complete and first-class medical services to you. And to ensure your treatment effect, you can consult your doctor any time after the treatment.