Athletes and Hollywood celebrities
(like Kobe Bryant, Angelina Jolie, Courtney Love and Tiger Woods) are
increasingly turning to platelet-rich plasma (or PRP) therapy to improve their
health and turn back the clock. What is this new craze?
Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) is blood
plasma that has been enriched with
platelets. As a concentrated source of platelets, PRP contains (and
releases through a process called 'degranulation') several different growth
factors and other cytokines that stimulate healing of bone and soft tissue.
PRP has been investigated and used
as a clinical tool for several types of medical treatments, including nerve
injury, tendinitis, osteoarthritis, cardiac muscle injury, bone repair and
regeneration, plastic surgery, and oral surgery. PRP has also received
attention in the popular media as a result of its use in treating sports
injuries in professional athletes.
As to the
process, PRP can be carefully injected into the injured area. For example, in Achilles tendonitis, a condition commonly seen in
runners and tennis players, the heel cord can become swollen, inflamed, and
painful. A mixture of PRP and local anesthetic can be injected directly into
this inflamed tissue. Afterwards, the pain at the area of injection may actually
increase for the first week or two, and it may be several weeks before the
patient feels a beneficial effect.
Perhaps for
these reasons, the treatment has proved popular with movie starts and leading athletes. In
addition to the list of big-names, a number of less well-off people also using
this non-surgical growth treatment to treat hip/ankle/shoulder injuries and
battle ailments such as arthritis and disc degeneration.
Here is one
person, from a video on YouTube, describing the treatment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5vmatkhOBM
However, does PRP work? It would seem that the jury is
currently out. Whilst some clinical
trials have produced interesting results, the overall effects have not yet been
confirmed in large-scale controlled clinical trials. For example, according
to one
literature review, clinical use of
PRP for nerve injury and sports medicine has produced "promising" but
"inconsistent" results in early trials. Furthermore, in addition to
sports, some concern exists as to whether PRP treatments violate anti-doping
rules, such as those maintained by the World
Anti-Doping Agency.
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