MIT Technology Review writer Antonio Regalado wrote: “The NFL Has A Problem With Stem Cell Treatments.” The problem he was referring to in his article is the fact that professional athletes are getting injections of stem cells to hasten their recovery from injuries and researchers have yet to come up with evidence that the treatment really works.
Beginning about eight years ago, doctors began extracting small amounts of a player’s fat or bone marrow, which contains stem cells, and injecting it back into the site of injury. The idea was to encourage tissue regeneration. Regalado noted that NFL quarterback Peyton Manning is reported to have had a stem cell treatment to his neck in 2011.
Many doctors are in agreement that there is only thin medical evidence to support the use of stem cell treatment. But physicians who are administering the treatment respond saying the treatments often have good results and should be given a chance.
Regalado quoted Rice University researchers Kirstin Matthews and Maude Cuchiara, as saying that “the NFL should create an independent panel and fund research on whether stem cell treatments actually work, similar to what it did after facing questions around concussions and brain injury.”
“I think they should be more proactive. They should get ahead of this one, ” said Matthews.
Freddie Fu, M.D., an orthopedic surgeon who is chairman of sports medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and doctor for the school’s sports teams, told Regalado, “Any of these injections have a placebo effect. We don’t know what we are putting in. We don’t really know exactly what it does, biologically. ”
Placebo effect or not, the treatments are becoming routine. Kenneth Mautner, director of primary care sports medicine at Emory University and team physician for its athletics department, told Regaldo that he performs about two to four bone marrow injections a week. “I’ll be the first one to tell you it’s a new procedure, ” he says. “The evidence from human studies is really weak at this point.”
Chicago area physician Mitchell Sheinkop, M.D. estimates that he has injected stem cells from bone marrow into the hips of about 400 patients in the past two years. The demand is there.
Regalado reports that Shane Shapiro, M.D., an assistant professor of orthopedic surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Florida, is carrying out a test on 25 older adults who have arthritic knees. Shapiro is obtaining bone marrow from each subject, spinning it in a centrifuge to concentrate the stem cells and injecting them into the arthritic knees. Each participant is injected with stem cells in only one knee. The other knee gets a shot of salt water. Those saltwater treated knees are the controls. Shapiro does not expect to learn the results of his test for a year.
In the meantime the stem cells injections go on, fueled by hope and occasional dramatic results. Bone marrow stem cell treatments offered by doctors in the U.S. are not regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
