A team of researchers in Leeds
are hoping to help speed up the effects of ligament reconstruction
surgery – to
enable sports men and women to get back into action more quickly after
sports injuries.
At the moment reconstruction surgery to repair cruciate ligament damage
is performed using a patient’s own tissues, often from a hamstring
or even part of another ligament. While this is successful, it leaves
a weakness in the site the tissue is taken from, and the strength of
affected muscles can take up to a year to recover.
Now Dr Bahaa Seedhom, Arthritis Research Campaign (arc) reader in
bioengineering at the University of Leeds, has been awarded funding
of £172,879 over three years from the charity to find out if
a combination of exercise and use of human growth factor speeds up
the recovery process.
Ligament construction surgery also involves the use of synthetic grafts,
which, once implanted into the site of ligament damage in the patient’s
body, becomes populated by stem cells, migrating from the bone marrow.
Under the effect of exercise, these cells produce tissue which gradually
matures into ligament-like tissue robust enough for the patient to
eventually regain previous levels of activity.
“ But after surgery, because the joints feel so stable and
secure people are very eager to go back and play sport immediately,
and this
can cause the ligaments to rub against the bone and fail,” explained
Dr Seedhom, who is based at the Academic Unit of Musculoskeletal Disease.
“ It
takes a good few months for the tissues to grow – it doesn’t
happen overnight - but patients are sometimes not very patient.”
Dr Seedhom and his team, Drs Mostafa Raif, Elena Jones, Frederique
Ponchel and Professor Dennis McGonagle, aim to investigate whether
using exercise and growth factors would effectively and safely speed
up this process. In laboratory experiments, they plan to test four
different types of growth factor to find out which works best, in combination
with exercise, and what the best dose is.
“ If we find this works, we would have to look at the process
by which the growth factor is introduced into the body, possibly by
putting it in the implant itself so that it is slowly released into
the body, but until we have tested it in the laboratory we really don’t
know if it will work or not, or whether it is safe or not,” he
added.
“ That’s what we plan to find out.”
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