Stem Cell Treatment for DDD

[Simenad]

I have been scouring the internet looking for info on Stem cell research, everything I read about says that it is the most promising news for people with DDD. Studies have been ongoing for a while. Anyone know anything about it, I have nothing left to loose so I would even volunteer to be a guinea pig?

[annapurna]

So far, I've heard of Regenexx using stem cells to try to repair annular tears and a stem cell-like technique called ADCT. I don't know of anyone that's injecting stem cells directly into the nucleus but I'd wonder about Regenexx or Stem Cell Institute in Panama City, Panama. In general, you have fat-derived stems cells (Stem Cell Institute primarily and Regenexx a little), blood (Moraga does the spin-down and concentration and you have to find someone to inject it), bone marrow (Regenexx and many others). There's debate about which stem cell types do the best for treating which conditions and a second, equally valid, debate about the number and efficacity of the stem cells derived from each technique. Do you go with the multi-millions of stem cells that are known to be a little less potent per cell or the multi-thousand really potent cells that are ridiculous easy to handle with multiple treatments?

If you believe the literature, bone marrow derived probably has the edge over fat and both are better than blood for turning into what you'd need. For an equal cell count, non-cultured is better than cultured cells but you rarely get an equal cell count. Culturing is known to decrease efficacity but we've not see any documented studies as to how much loss could be expected. For what it's worth, Laura's used both cultured and non-cultured depending upon the nature of what's getting injected and how difficulty the stem cell extraction and reimplantation is going to be.

After the decisions about stem cell types is made, there's also a lot of literature that discusses various growth factors that can encourage stem cell proliferation and differentiation. Everyone seems top think that platelet rich plasma seems to be the top choice for those factors. Some inject it ahead of time, some with the stem cells, and some after.

Recovery protocols after the injection will also need some thought. Based on our experience with stem cell techniques with knee damage, this kind of approach is very slow. Laura's been on crutches for 9 weeks, full time, and an additional 3 part-time recovering from regrowing cartilage and meniscus using stem cell techniques. I realize that it's not practical to be non-weight bearing on you lumbar spine but having to put weight on it will probably mean that you'll need multiple treatments and your recovery will likely take a year or more. We've seen some literature about remodeling weight bearing cartilage using human growth hormone that suggests that you can regrow under load but it takes a huge amount of time.

The last thing our experience has taught us is that stem cell techniques are best suited for early intervention. If you're bone-on-bone going in, you're likely to need surgical intervention before the stem cells could even begin helping. If you have a dewatering disk with full disk height, throwing some stem cells in might mean that you'll be dead long before that disk ever troubles you again.

I'll add something off topic here: You specifically asked about DDD, but stem cells might also work for early stage facet arthrosis. It takes a pretty good needle jockey to get them injected in the right spot, but they could work. After all, they've been in use for treating weight-bearing joint surfaces for better than twenty years.