Musculoskeletal diseases Archives - Dr Amin Azhari

stem cell can help low back pain and spinal issues

Researchers from Osaka University and Kyoto University develop a stem cell-based biomaterial that can help regenerate tissue associated with low back pain and spinal issues.

Many people have experienced the struggles of dealing with low back pain. A common cause of this pain is degeneration of intervertebral disks (IVDs), which are located between the vertebrae and help give the spinal column its flexibility. Thus, IVD degeneration can lead to more serious conditions such as spinal deformity. In a recent article published in Biomaterials, a team led by researchers at Osaka University and Kyoto University demonstrated that using cartilage tissue derived from human stem cells could help prevent the loss of functionality from IVD degeneration.

The article, “Human iPS cell-derived cartilaginous tissue spatially and functionally replaces nucleus pulposus,” was published in Biomaterials.

Release date: 15 April 2022
Source: Osaka University

Cell Treatment Slows Disease in Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy Patients

Cell Therapy Developed by Smidt Heart Institute Leader Delays Disease Progression in Patients Who Have Few Treatment Options
A cell therapy developed by the executive director of the Smidt Heart Institute stabilizes weakened muscles–including the heart muscle–in Duchenne muscular dystrophy patients, a new study published in the international peer-reviewed journal The Lancet shows.

If the HOPE-2 study’s success is duplicated in the upcoming multicenter, randomized, placebo-controlled HOPE-3 clinical trial, the intravenous cell therapy could become the first Food and Drug Administration-approved treatment for Duchenne patients with advanced disease.

“This therapy is unique in that it addresses two vital needs in patients with Duchenne: physical movement and a healthy heart,” said Eduardo Marbán, MD, PhD, executive director of the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai, the Mark S. Siegel Family Foundation Distinguished Professor, an author on the study and the inventor of cardiosphere-derived cells (CDCs), progenitor cells derived from human heart tissue, which have been used in multiple clinical trials.

Duchenne muscular dystrophy is a rare, inherited disorder that mostly affects males. It’s caused by mutations on a gene on the X chromosome that interferes with the production of a protein called dystrophin that muscles need to function. Children born with such mutations have muscle weakness throughout their bodies. This makes it difficult for them to do normal activities like run, jump, climb stairs, stand up after sitting and pedal a bicycle. They can also become extremely sick when muscles in their hearts and respiratory organs weaken.

The prognosis for patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy is bleak. Most use a wheelchair by the time they are teenagers and don’t typically live into their 30s. There is no cure for the disease. Currently, the only approved medical treatments are aimed at delaying loss of the ability to walk; nothing is available for patients with more advanced disease, who now outnumber those with milder symptoms.

Release date: 10 March 2022
Source: Cedars-Sinai Medical Center

Telehealth-delivered diet and exercise program eased knee pain and triggered weight loss

New research investigating the benefits of telehealth-delivered exercise and diet programs has found 80 per cent of participants experienced improvement in knee pain and an average of 10 per cent in loss of body weight, with one man shedding 39 kilograms.

More than 400 individuals with knee osteoarthritis participated in the Better Knee, Better Me trial, developed by the University of Melbourne in partnership with Medibank and Austin Health.

Published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, the study shows researchers evaluated two six-month telehealth-delivered exercise programs, one with and one without a weight-loss dietary program, compared with an information-only control group.

During the trial, participants in the intervention groups were provided support from physiotherapists and dietitians via Zoom and a suite of resources. Those in the exercise plus diet group also received meal replacements so they could undertake a ketogenic low energy diet.

Compared to the group that only received information, both intervention programs resulted in benefits for pain, function and quality of life. Compared to the exercise-only program, the combined exercise and diet program led to additional benefits – including a greater reduction in pain, greater improvements in physical function, lower use of pain medications, and significant weight loss. After both programs, participants were also less willing to undergo knee joint replacement surgery.

Lead researcher and Director of the Centre for Health, Exercise and Sports Medicine at the University of Melbourne Professor Kim Bennell, said participants lost on average 10.2 kilograms over a six-month period with four out of five participants achieving significant improvement in pain. She said 30 per cent of participants lived in regional and rural Australia.

Release date: 30 November 2021
Source: University of Melbourne

Sport Medicine

Does physical activity impact risk of knee osteoarthritis?

In an analysis published in Arthritis & Rheumatology, investigators did not find any link between the amount and duration of physical activity with individuals’ risk of developing knee osteoarthritis.

The analysis included six global community-based studies including a total of 5,065 participants with and without knee osteoarthritis who were followed for five to 12 years.

“Knowing that the amount of physical activity and time spent doing it is not associated with the development of knee osteoarthritis is important evidence for both clinicians and the public who may need to consider this when prescribing physical activity for health,” said co–lead author Thomas Perry, BSc, PhD, of the University of Oxford, in the UK.

Next, it will be important to understand the role of injury and specific types of activity within this association, noted co–lead author Lucy S. Gates, PhD, of the University of Southampton, and co–senior author Maria Sanchez-Santos, of the University of Oxford.

Release date: 03 November 2021
Source: Wiley

Back Pain Common Among Astronauts Offers Treatment Insights for the Earth-Bound

— As more people travel into space, Johns Hopkins Medicine experts expect more physicians will see patients with space travel-related pain.

— Although most back pain in space disappears on its own, space travelers are at higher risk for sciatica — a form of back pain that can radiate down the legs.

— Humans can “grow” up to 3 inches in space as the spine adapts to microgravity.

— Stress, trauma and changes in nutrition likely contribute to back pain developed during space travel.

With growing numbers of humans venturing into space, experts predict an increase in the number of people experiencing the physical toll of such travel, including highly common forms of back pain.

The prediction comes in a new report by researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine, published in the issue of Anesthesiology, based on a comprehensive review of past studies measuring the effects of space travel on the spine, and exploring methods to prevent, diagnose, and treat back pain. The scientists say further study among astronauts of these methods — including specialized suits and certain exercises — may provide insights for treating back pain in the estimated 80% of Earth-bound people who experience some form of it over their lifetimes.

According to the review, past studies of astronauts have shown that 52% of space travelers report some form of back pain in the first two to five days of space travel. That figure is based on a retrospective study of 722 space flights worldwide published in Aerospace Medicine and Human Performance in 2012. The condition is now dubbed “space adaptation back pain,” and although 86% of cases were mild, the pain was enough to hinder an astronaut’s ability to complete tasks.

Release date: 21 October 2021
Source: Johns Hopkins Medicine

How therapy, not pills, can nix chronic pain and change the brain

As many as one in five Americans suffer from chronic pain, an often intractable problem that costs the country more than $600 billion in treatments and lost work-time and has helped fuel a deadly opioid epidemic.

But new CU Boulder research, published today in the journal JAMA Psychiatry Original Investigation, provides some of the strongest evidence yet that a non-drug, psychological treatment can provide potent and durable relief.

This study suggests a fundamentally new way to think about both the causes of chronic back pain for many people and the tools that are available to treat that pain. – Sona Dimidjian, Director Renee Crown Wellness Institute

The study found that two-thirds of chronic back pain patients who underwent a four-week psychological treatment called Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) were pain-free or nearly pain-free post-treatment. And most maintained relief for one year. They also showed changes in pain-generating brain regions after therapy.

Release date: 29 September 2021
Source: University of Colorado at Boulder

Geriatrics, Geriatrics, Public Health

Nasal cartilage relieves osteoarthritis in the knee

Cartilage cells from the nasal septum can not only help repair cartilage injuries in the knee – according to researchers from the University of Basel and the University Hospital Basel, they can also withstand the chronic inflammatory tissue environment in osteoarthritis and even counteract the inflammation.

A research team at the Department of Biomedicine of the University of Basel and the University Hospital of Basel is cultivating cartilage tissue from cells of the nasal septum to repair articular cartilage in the knee. The team led by Professor Ivan Martin and Professor Andrea Barbero has already succeeded in doing this in initial clinical studies on isolated cartilage damage, and they have now reported that the approach could also be suitable for degenerative joint diseases such as osteoarthritis. Their findings have been published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Osteoarthritis is associated with cartilage degradation, which can cause severe pain and reduce mobility. The therapeutic approach up to now aims at palliative treatment of the inflammation and pain until a knee joint replacement by a prosthetic implant becomes unavoidable. Joint prostheses, however, have a limited durability, which makes the treatment problematic, especially in younger patients.

Release date: 01 September 2021
Source: University of Basel

Fibromyalgia likely the result of autoimmune problems

The King’s-led study, in collaboration with University of Liverpool and the Karolinska Institute, shows that many of the symptoms in fibromyalgia syndrome are caused by antibodies increasing the activity of pain-sensing nerves.

New research from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King’s College London, in collaboration with the University of Liverpool and the Karolinska Institute, has shown that many of the symptoms in fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) are caused by antibodies that increase the activity of pain-sensing nerves throughout the body.

The results show that fibromyalgia is a disease of the immune system, rather than the currently held view that it originates in the brain.

The study, published today in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, demonstrates that the increased pain sensitivity, muscle weakness, reduced movement, and reduced number of small nerve-fibres in the skin that are typical of FMS, are all a consequence of patient antibodies.

Release date: 01 July 2021
Source: King’s College London

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Motor neurons derived from patients point to new possible drug target for ALS

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a severe, fatal neurodegenerative disorder causing loss of motor neurons and voluntary muscle action. While mouse studies have identified potential treatments, these drugs have typically done very poorly in human trials. Researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital, working in collaboration with Pfizer, now report a high-throughput target and drug discovery platform using motor neurons made from ALS patients. Using the platform, they confirmed two known targets and identified an existing class of drugs — agonists to the dopamine D2 receptor — as potential novel treatments.

The researchers, led by Clifford Woolf, MD, PhD, director of the F.M. Kirby Neurobiology Center at Boston Children’s, and first authors Xuan Huang, PhD, and Kasper Roet, PhD, in Woolf’s lab, describe the platform and their findings June 8 in the journal Cell Reports .

To create the motor neurons used for drug screening, the team used induced pluripotent stem cells, made by the lab of Kevin Eggan at Harvard University from tissue samples of patients with ALS who carried the SOD1(A4V) mutation. The Woolf lab also developed a high-throughput, live-cell imaging technology to measure the motor neurons’ hyperexcitability — the tendency to “fire” excessively — before and after exposure to candidate drugs. Woolf and colleagues previously showed that human motor neurons with ALS mutations are more excitable than normal motor neurons.

Release date: 08 Jun 2021
Source: Boston Children’s Hospital

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Women with Osteoporosis and Low Bone Density Are at Increased Risk of Hearing Loss

Hearing loss is the third most common chronic health condition in the United States. Previous studies of people with hearing loss have uncovered higher prevalence of osteoporosis — a disease in which the bones become weak and brittle — and low bone density (LBD). But research on whether these conditions may influence risk of hearing loss over time is scarce. It is also unknown whether hearing loss can be avoided by taking bisphosphonates, the primary medication used to prevent fractures in people with reduced bone density. As part of the Conservation of Hearing Study (CHEARS), researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital analyzed data from nearly 144,000 women who were followed for up to 34 years. They found that risk of subsequent moderate or worse hearing loss was up to 40 percent higher in study participants with osteoporosis or LBD. The study, published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, also found that bisphosphonates did not alter risk of hearing loss.

Release date: 24 May 2021
Source: Brigham and Women’s Hospital