A Solution for Knee Osteoarthritis with Adipose-Derived Autologous Stem Cells in Middle-Aged People

Background: Adipose tissue has achieved a great relevance as possible fount of mesenchymal stem cells for the healing of different articular pathologies including Knee Osteoarthritis (KOA). Stem cells derived from the Adipose Tissue (ADSCs) have a possibility to differentiate into chondrocyte, can reduce the immune response and can stimulate a local tissue repair, improving also the intra-articular

Methods and Findings: Intra-articular injections of ADSCs with other conservative or surgical treatments can lead to an improving of all clinical and functional postoperative outcomes evaluated in middle-aged patients with KOA or chondral lesions. Moreover, some scores based on Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) demonstrated an incremented quality of repaired cartilage in comparison with the pre-treatment. We observed no serious advent events.

Conclusion: The use of ADSCs appeared to be out of danger, effective and it can be supposed an alternative procedure for the healing of chondral lesions and degenerative OA suitable for middle-aged athlete but no specific studies have been focus on this population and no long term follow-up data are available.