Politics
Friday August 8, 2008
Adult Stem Cells Greatly Accelerate Bone Regeneration in Australian Trial
TODAY'S HEADLINES
E-MAIL
PRINT
By Hilary White
MELBOURNE, August 8, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Adult stem cells have helped to accelerate the healing of severe leg fractures in Australian trials. The trial involved five men and four women who had suffered the worst type of compound bone fractures in serious road accidents, some of whom still could not walk up to 41 months after their accidents.
One man who suffered a compound fracture and was still using crutches a year later, regained the use of his leg the day after the procedure and is now fully recovered, pain free and regularly runs and plays football. Eight of the ten patients experienced full bone regrowth. One man broke both his tibia and femur but only the tibia re-grew. Another patient required further surgery.
The technique was developed by Dr. Richard de Steiger, director of orthopaedic surgery at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, who told media that his team hopes it can be applied to hip replacement procedures as well as accidental injuries. The technology was developed by the hospital's regenerative medicine company, Mesoblast, which has the worldwide licence to commercialise. Dr. de Steiger said it is between three and five years away from being used in hospitals.
"The potential for doing this kind of work is very exciting … if we could try to re-grow cartilage it would mean we'd be able to help people with early arthritis of the knees and hips as a result of sporting trauma," Dr. de Steiger said.
In the procedure, bone marrow stem cells are harvested from the patient's pelvis in a non-invasive day procedure using a needle. The cells are cultivated in a laboratory until they have divided to create 15 billion cells over six weeks. Surgeons then applied the stem cells directly to the fractures. One patient in the trial, 36 year-old Anthony Giancola was walking the following day.
"Most of the time you have to have a secondary operation on the hip bone and take some bone graft out and that's often more painful than the surgery for the actual fracture."
"All these patients have avoided the need for having a second operation to get bone from somewhere else in the body. Instead the bone's just grown outside the body in a lab," Dr. de Steiger said.
Back to TopLatest Headlines
- Cardinal Rigali: You Can't Claim to be "Reducing Abortions" but Publicly Funding them in D.C.
- General Electric to Use Embryonic Stem Cells for Testing, Phase out Lab Rats
- Ohio Supreme Court Allows Planned Parenthood to Conceal Abortion Records in Sexual Abuse Case
- LifeSiteNews Canada Day and Independence Day Message. Taking a few days off. LSN returns Monday July 6
- Heroically Pro-Life Brazilian Archbishop's Resignation Accepted Under Cloud of Vatican Newspaper Misrepresentation
- Pro-Life Groups Announce New Colorado Personhood Initiative
- Judge Puts Kibosh on DC Gay "Marriage" Referendum
- Al Franken Win Hands Supermajority to Senate Democrats
- Group Funded by Canadian Bishops' D&P Joins with Others to Denounce the "Natural Family" and "Family Rights"
- Financially Troubled Planned Parenthood of El Paso Closes Doors
- Abortion Linked to Subsequent Pre-Term Births, New Research Again Confirms
- New Orleans Homosexual Couple Ask Fed. Court to Overturn Marriage Amendment
- Slim Hope Of New Ontario Progressive Conservative Party Leader Promoting Pro-Life, Pro-Family Issues
- Pope Accepts Resignation of Bishop Caught Involved in Homosexual Encounters
- Young Children Removed from UK Schools for "Inappropriate Sexual Behaviour"
- Northern Ireland Politician Cleared of Wrongdoing after Reiterating Christian Teaching on Homosexual Acts
- UK Conservative Leader Speaks at Gay Pride Fundraiser
- More Letters to the Editor on Canadian Catholic Development and Peace Scandal (July 1)
- Letters to the Editor - Readers Respond to Development and Peace Scandal
- Watch This Dramatic New Video on Catholic Bishops Conference Funding of Pro-Abortion Groups
Most Read this Week
- Homosexual Duke U. Director Charged with Offering Adopted 5-Year-Old for Sex
- Famed Fr. Corapi Calls Canadian Bishops' Dissent from Humanae Vitae "Catastrophic"
- Pope: It is a Childish Faith to Oppose the Church Teaching on Life and Family
- LifeSiteNews Detailed Response to Canadian Bishops' Whitewash Report on Development and Peace
- Heroically Pro-Life Brazilian Archbishop's Resignation Accepted Under Cloud of Vatican Newspaper Misrepresentation
- Young Children Removed from UK Schools for "Inappropriate Sexual Behaviour"
- Is Pro-Choice the New Pro-Life?
- General Electric to Use Embryonic Stem Cells for Testing, Phase Out Lab Rats
- Swedish Parents Won't Tell if Child is Boy or Girl as Gender Experiment
- Cardinal Rigali: You Can't Claim to be "Reducing Abortions" but Publicly Funding them in D.C.
MORE NEWS: 
LifeSiteNews.com Home Page Last 10 Days Archives Special Reports
Copyright © LifeSiteNews.com. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License. You may republish this article or portions of it without request provided the content is not altered and it is clearly attributed to "LifeSiteNews.com". Any website publishing of complete or large portions of original LifeSiteNews articles MUST additionally include a live link to www.LifeSiteNews.com. The link is not required for excerpts. Republishing of articles on LifeSiteNews.com from other sources as noted is subject to the conditions of those sources.