Regenerative Medicine for Knee Joint Disorders

Knee joint is the largest joint in the body and is most commonly injured. Knee joint takes a direct brunt of the body weight and unusual torsion forces which may predispose knee to early wearing out causing arthritis and susceptible to injuries. Knee injuries may cause fracture of bones, damage to articular cartilage or more frequently cause damage to ligaments and/or meniscus. The knee ligaments involved in the injuries are anterior and/or posterior cruciate ligaments, medial and/or lateral collateral ligaments. In addition, there are also several systemic diseases which cause disorders or degeneration of the knee joint and its structures. Due to poor vascular supply and low cellularity of the tendons, ligaments, meniscus and articular cartilage of the knee joint, the damage to these structures results in low healing potential. In addition, the edema of the inflamed tissue and effusion increases pressure in the joint space further reducing the blood supply. Poor healing of these structures can be augmented by using biological agents that provide nutrients and growth factors to improve vascular supply and induce cell growth, thus improving the quality of the healing in these structures. The articular cartilage of the knee joint is avascular with limited ability to repair and self-regenerate. Defects in the articular cartilage can cause debilitating degenerative joint disease. Biological agents and stem cells also have shown to improve rebuild the damaged knee articular cartilage.