Bad knees? Doctors now “Nose” what to do

Jumping up and down in celebrating might be difficult for those with knee injury or pain, but that might change soon with a breakthrough in medical science.

A small trail was undertaken with patients suffering from knee problems from either injury, accident, or osteoarthritis, where doctors harvested cells from their nose cartilage to help grow new cartilage tissue and transplant it to the knee.

The two-year trial resulted in most of the patients reporting drastic improvement to knee function, reducing pain, and an overall better quality of life. Now that the proof is in the pudding for the small trial it is going to be expanded into a much bigger study to get results from all different types of people, knee ailments, and cartilage growth.

Ivan Martin, lead author of the study and professor of tissue engineering at the University of Basel and University Hospital Basel in Switzerland, told Medical News Today that a bigger study is needed, “Moreover, in order to extend the potential use of this technique to older people or those with degenerative cartilage pathologies like osteoarthritis, a lot more fundamental and pre-clinical research work needs to be done.”

One of the most promising outcomes from the initial study is that the age of the patient doesn’t factor into the success rate of the procedure. However, more testing will be needed in the bigger test. Professor Martin stated, “Our findings confirm the safety and feasibility of cartilage grafts engineered from nasal cells to repair damaged knee cartilage. But use of this procedure in everyday clinical practice is still a long way off as it requires rigorous assessment of efficacy in larger groups of patients and the development of manufacturing strategies to ensure cost effectiveness.”

Do you suffer from knee problems? Would you be willing to have your doctor harvest some cartilage cells from your nose to fix the problem?