stem cell therapy for arthritic knee - has anyone had it?

i had some pseudo microfracture done during arthroscopy - I'm not running.

Research Guy,

After reading your post, I feel better about not trying stem cell on our older, arthritic dog. I was on the fence, couldn't determine what was hype and what was not. At the end of the day, we went to a specialist who recommended laser therapy and it has been a great help, but no cure, of course.

I have a great interest in arthritis, in general, and any legit research, theory that you could point me to, would be most appreciative. Also, interested in donating $ to worthy arthritis organizations.

Feel free to contact me via email:

sjbeale@verizon.net

Thanks.

Bump

I would be interested in knowing how your trial goes. I am looking into stem cell therapy as an alternative to knee replacement. when will you have the injections?

OP hereI had the stem cell injection yesterday. I'll let others know how it goes. It'll be a few months.

papajack wrote:

I would be interested in knowing how your trial goes. I am looking into stem cell therapy as an alternative to knee replacement. when will you have the injections?

papajack i have only just seen your post

Good luck with it. I'll look forward to updates. A few weeks ago I was talking to a friend who's run more than one Olympic Marathon. She has a friend who just has stem cel;l treatment and says the friend can't stop talking about how well it worked so I hope you get the same reaction. What made you decide to go ahead and get it done?

thanks, hre. im hopeful. at the very least I hope to be able to go for a long walk. what made me get it done? desperation.

I'm interested as well, keep us updated. I'm hoping that by the time I'm 50 they'll have some legit cartilage replacement (or regen.). I'll probably be needing it.

In the meantime i've been surprised at what I've been able to do on bad knees. Five years ago, at 22, I tore both PCLs plus minor damage to other ligaments in my left knee in a pretty severe accident (never repaired). After almost a year of rehab and still not walking without pain i thought I was done for good. I decided to run through the pain anyway. I started with limping through a 1/4 mile that first week and going home defeated. I pushed through and it gradually got less painful. 6 months later I hit 80mpw and got myself one last decent 5k time.

Then I tore my medial meniscus while doing squat. Without the PCLs the medial knee compartment sees much higher loads, plus I did not have adequate hip strength to keep good form. I got the jagged parts of the tear smoothed out, but the pain persisted for another year even with rehab. Again I thought that I was done for good. But recently I have hit a turning point in rehab and been able to run mostly pain free. Hit 25mpw last week and I am thankful for it.

One interesting note was when I got my MRI for the meniscus there was no sign of cartilage degeneration. I expected there to be at least a little after over a year of decent mileage on busted knees. It'll catch up to me eventually I'm sure.

Oh yeah, desperation. Maybe the best reason of all. Good luck again. I've been tottering on the edge of doing it as well.

I had microfracture for my knee, along with trimming my medial meniscus, so I'm interested in this too. I can run again, but at reduced volumes and slower speeds. My knee is maybe 75% of what it was pre-injury. Plus, in theory, the results from the surgery will eventually wear out. My hope is that by the time it does, they'll have come up with a good cartilage replacement.

well, 3 days now and no change :)

there are two groups, unfortunately, i fell into group that gets only one injection and not two

dreamin, quite a story of knee damage there, but ultimately no cartilage issues and that is very positive. It may take 4 - 10 years after a traumatic event for the cartilage damage to show.

microf guy , i'm hoping I can hit those 25 miles a week one day. I'd better lose weight first though,

Get PRP if you can afford it.

It's expensive, the cost for an effective version is about $7K (pro sports teams will pay up to $80K for the most recent kit), and it's not covered by insurance.

I've spent about $20K in total on PRP and can attest it works every time I've been given it by an experienced doctor but the cheap version I was given by an inexperience physiatrist didn't work at all.

After the physiatrist's injection I spent 3 days on crutches.

Each time my sports doc has given me a PRP injection I've walked out of his office and been able to run without pain within 2 or 3 days.

wwerwe wrote:

microf guy , i'm hoping I can hit those 25 miles a week one day. I'd better lose weight first though,

I'm running 30-40 miles a week (down from 70-80 before surgery) and my 5k "race" pace is a full minute a mile slower, but one of the promises I made myself during rehab was that if I could run again, I wouldn't complain about distance or speed...I'd just be thankful to run again. When I'm tempted to complain, I remind myself of the LONG time on crutches and doing rehab, and how blessed I am to be running at all.

And I worked so hard at rehab, while watching my diet, that I didn't put on too much weight. I think that really helped.

Intra-articular injection of mesenchynal stem cells has been shown extreme early promise for the treatment of previously irreversible orthopedic conditions like cartilage and meniscal injury, and was being used successfully by a small number of clinics prior to 2010. However, in 2012, the FDA won a lawsuit alleging that autologous stem cells are "drugs" and therefore subject to regulation as such, and this decision completely put the brakes on the development of this technology. It will now take decades for industry commercialize as "drugs" therapies that are desperately needed and technologically feasible RIGHT NOW. You can still get the stem cell treatment in places outside the reach of U.S. regulators, but only at extreme expense (The best clinic, located in the Cayman Islands, charges $17,500).

I had the micro-fracture surgery in 2002 for a defect the surgeon said was the size of a quarter. He didn't think I would be able to run again.

I was religious about the rehab too and didn't rush it. 14 months after surgery was able to run 15.30 in a 5000m. Personal best was 14.52 years before.

I still can run every day, just not as much.

The knee has never been the same, but I feel lucky to be able to run.

My thought is that the real trick is to regain muscle balance after the surgery and the rehab.

The first running I could do pain free was barefoot on fieldturf.

Regaining muscle strength and balance was hard and took forever. After spending months on crutches, my surgical leg had wasted away to nothing. It took a full year after getting off crutches to regain the strength in the leg. It had no balance, no coordination, no strength. And that was after doing everything the doc and pt told me to...and more.

thanks for the update, hoping things start improving for you and you keep the updates coming

EZ10Miler wrote:

I had microfracture on my right knee in 2003. Ive run 7 marathons and hundreds of miles since. I was lucky in that the damaged area was not an area of the femur that has direct contact.

The treatment wasn't easy. I was off my feet for long time, and wasn't running for a full 6-8 mo. after.

On my left knee I was diagnosed with arthritis on my patella. I had supartz injections (5 injections over 5 weeks) and that has done wonders. I'm running a ton of miles and racing quite a bit.

Before the treatment I was constantly hurting and having flare ups that would take me down or severely limit my running. Since then I've been hitting it pretty hard without issue. (Granted I have kept up with my PT exercises.)

FYI I'm 47 and a life long runner. Been lacing 'em up for 35 years.

EZ10Miler wrote:

I had microfracture on my right knee in 2003. Ive run 7 marathons and hundreds of miles since. I was lucky in that the damaged area was not an area of the femur that has direct contact.

The treatment wasn't easy. I was off my feet for long time, and wasn't running for a full 6-8 mo. after.

On my left knee I was diagnosed with arthritis on my patella. I had supartz injections (5 injections over 5 weeks) and that has done wonders. I'm running a ton of miles and racing quite a bit.

Before the treatment I was constantly hurting and having flare ups that would take me down or severely limit my running. Since then I've been hitting it pretty hard without issue. (Granted I have kept up with my PT exercises.)

FYI I'm 47 and a life long runner. Been lacing 'em up for 35 years.

oops.

Thanks for the info. I just had a 3 injections over 4 weeks Supartz regimin, last week was last injections - both knees.

Really has dialed down the arthritis pain, Doc says to not evaluate it until 4 weeks total have passed since last injection.

But, I can feel a lowering of pain, it feels like cushioning has been added to my knees.

Thanks all for sharing your info.

Good luck, everybody...remember when they told us running would be and was good for us? lol, erg.