Researchers envisage through new study that patients having problem of hip or knee could one day produce new replacement joints. They have revealed that it is possible to produce appropriately working joints inside human body by using sufferer’s own stem cells even after smashed bone has been detached.
Those joints would able to bear weight, full range of movements, and even would last long more than current available artificial machines. Moreover these in grown joints would save sufferers from replicate surgery after hip or knee replacement that typically last for twenty years. The US research team carried out a revolutionary study on rabbits.
The study would pave new ways in future where people could grow bone and cartilage inside their own body. The team removed the limbs of ten rabbits and replaced them with artificial limb shaped skeleton. It was infused with chemicals that attract bone and cartilage stem cells.
Just after four weeks of surgery, the rabbits had grown their joints and were able to move normally and could bear weight similar to animals that had never undergone surgery, reported the study published in online today in The Lancet medical journal. The rabbits had grown the joints using their own stem cells rather than depend upon injection of stem cells.
It was for the first time that researchers had regenerated an entire joint using an animal’s own stem cells with return of functions including locomotion and weight bearing. Patients who need the knee, shoulder, hip or finger joints regenerated, the rabbit model gives an evidence of principle, said Professor Jeremy Mao from Columbia University Medical Center, New York.
The US research team is the first to have shown that it is a promising method and is the first to have grown a large amount of good quality bone and cartilage into successful working joints.