I thought of my Dad when I read about this new medical breakthrough. He’s been through one knee replacement and his other knee is pretty much bone on bone. But he is still more active than many 20 years his junior. But there’s a cost for his 20 to 40 mile biking treks.

The new study from tissue engineers at Bristol University, UK, is the first to look in detail at what happens to tissues after they have been implanted in patients. The researchers took cartilage-producing cells from 23 patients with knee injuries and grew them on scaffolds made from hyaluronic acid ? a compound that occurs naturally in cartilage.

After two weeks of growth, the cells and scaffold were inserted to fix tears of up to 11 square centimetres in the knee cartilage of the patients. An average of 16 months later the researchers examined the health of the engineered tissue.

Arthritis Hope

“We found the cartilage matures well, even in patients with early osteoarthritis,” lead researcher Anthony Hollander told New Scientist. Osteoarthritis, or degenerative arthritis, is a condition most common in the elderly, where cartilage slowly disappears from joints. “In these patients it seems to mature even better, suggesting it might be possible to treat patients with that condition, not just accident patients.”

I wonder how long it will be for this to be fully tested before we see it as an option?

New Scientist Breaking News - Lab-grown cartilage fixes damaged knees

h/t Lucianne