Abstract
With our aging population desiring to remain active, the incidence and costs associated
with managing knee pain from both acute injury and symptomatic knee osteoarthritis
continue to dramatically increase. Current treatment methods fall short with respect
to their ability to improve the intra-articular environment and restore normal joint
homeostasis. With increasing basic science and clinical evidence showing efficacy,
cell-based therapies such as bone marrow concentrate (BMC) hold promise as a nonsurgical
joint preserving treatment approach. BMC has inherent advantages over other treatments
commonly used for various knee pathologies because it is a point-of-care orthobiologic
product that uniquely and simultaneously delivers growth factors, anti-inflammatory
proteins, and mesenchymal stem cells. There is increasing evidence for the use of
BMC for repair of focal cartilage defects and for the treatment of generalized knee
pain. However, continued high-quality studies are necessary for the clinical utility
of BMC to be critically assessed with particular attention paid to appropriate patient
selection, standardized aspiration, and processing and reporting of both functional
and imaging-based outcomes.
Keywords
BMA - IRAP - BMC - MSC - IL-1ra
