Marc Darrow MD,JD
Stem cell therapy works in a multi-factorial way. Stem cells repair, stem cells regenerate, and stem cells communicate. Communication is one of the key but less understood functions of stem cell therapy. In this communication aspect, newly introduced stem cells (those introduced in stem cell therapy injections) can mobilize stem cells already in your knee to jump start a new repair cycle for degenerative and acute injury damage.
In 2011, doctors at the University of Aberdeen published research in the journal Arthritis and rheumatism that provided the first evidence that resident stem cells in the knee joint synovium underwent proliferation (multiplied) and chondrogenic differentiation (made themselves into cartilage cells) following injury. (1) This paper, presenting the idea that stem cells in an injured knee increased in numbers in preparation of healing has been cited by more than 68 medical studies.
One of the more recent of these 68 papers is a June 2019 study (2) in which researchers suggest that in both rheumatoid arthritis and degenerative arthritis, communication between the native cells in the damage knee causes an increase of stem cells found in the synovial fluid.
A new study in The journal of knee surgery,(3) May 2020 noted that synovial fluid-derived stem cell population increase exponentially in patients with joint injury or disease, pointing to a potential use as a biomarker or as a treatment of some orthopaedic disorders.
