In response to a number of enquiries about companies selling miraculous stem-cell containing therapeutic products who are offering participation in an “IRB-cleared” clinical study, I would urge physicians to be cautious before signing up. In my opinion, there are a number of issues here, including smoke screens by companies that want to make a buck,...Read More
In the previous post, I reviewed evidence presented in Bar-Or, et al. concerning the potential analgesic activity of saline used as a placebo in clinical studies. The authors provided evidence that saline didn’t act as an “inert” material in clinical studies. I will cover the authors thoughts on possible mechanisms for the saline’s analgesic activity...Read More
Recently, while preparing a presentation on the current status of PRP and its clinical utility, I was struck by the large number of studies that rely on physiological saline as a placebo in double blinded, placebo-controlled clinical studies. This type of study is considered to be the gold standard format for performing clinical studies, since...Read More
The focus of the previous three posts (Part One, Part Two, and Part Three) has been on reviewing various aspects of a paper recently published on the three-year milestone data of a clinical study in which study subjects had their own BMC injected into a 1-level or 2-level degenerative disc pathology in an attempt to...Read More
The topic of the last two posts (Part One and Part Two) has been the recent publication of three-year milestone data of a clinical study investigating the safety and feasibility of treating lumbar degenerative disc disease with an autologous injection of bone marrow concentrate (BMC). The three-year milestone publication naturally follows the previous publication of...Read More
I started reviewing in the last post details from the publication of the three-year milestone outcomes for a clinical study on treating degenerative disc disease with BMC. See the previous post for the link to the article in PubMed and my statement concerning the fact that I am a co-author on the paper, along with...Read More
Sometimes it is good to get away on vacation, which is why I didn’t have a new post for the Blog last week. Not only did I get a break from the routine, but the god for post topics smiled on me and a paper entitled “Autologous bone marrow concentrate intradiscal injection for the treatment...Read More
In the last post, I focused solely on adverse events associated with the bone marrow aspiration (BMA) procedure itself. In this post, I would like to return to another of Dr. Hernigou’s classic publications on the use of BMC to treat long-bone non-unions. I covered his publication on the benefits of BMC-augmentation of a surgical...Read More
In the previous post, I started reviewing a classic paper published by Dr. Philippe Hernigou and co-workers, entitled “Biological augmentation of rotator cuff repair with mesenchymal stem cells during arthroscopy improves healing and prevents further tears: a case-controlled study.” I will continue in this post by reporting on clinical outcomes from the study. Most importantly,...Read More
Dr. Philippe Hernigou published a paper in 2014 entitled “Biological augmentation of rotator cuff repair with mesenchymal stem cells during arthroscopy improves healing and prevents further tears: a case-controlled study.” I selected this paper to start my review of Dr. Hernigou’s extensive clinical study series on BMC therapy for orthopedic pathologies in part because it has...Read More
