"This is a first important step in showing that the ACL can heal if we give it the right conditions," Murray says. "That's an important shift from thinking that the ACL has to be completely replaced after an injury."
ACL injuries are notorious for not healing well. Epidemic among teenage girls who are five times likelier than boys to tear the ligament they typically occur during sports that involve jumping and pivoting, like soccer or basketball. ACLs are currently reconstructed by replacing the torn ligament with a tendon graft. This painful operation allows patients to return to sports after significant rehabilitation, but it does not fully restore knee mechanics, and does not prevent arthritis from developing years later.
Working with an animal model of a partial ACL tear, Murray's team inserted a collagen gel, mixed with platelet-rich blood plasma, into the wound. The gel provided a physical "bridge" between the torn ligament ends, while the platelets churned out a variety of growth factors. Compared with untreated knees, knees treated with the gel showed greater defect filling at 6 weeks (43 percent versus 23 percent). The gel-treated ACL defects also had a 40 percent increase in mechanical strength at 6 weeks, compared with just 14 percent for untreated defects.
Although she cautions that these results are preliminary and that more work needs to be done, Murray hopes to eventually extend her ACL regeneration technique to
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Contact: Aaron Patnode
aaron.patnode@childrens.harvard.edu
617-355-6420
Children's Hospital Boston
27-Mar-2006