New Delhi: A biomedical company based in Israel has claimed that, for the first time, a patient has been able to heal their own fractured shinbone after being injected with a bone graft, made from his own cells, and grown outside his body in a laboratory.
The company, Bonus BioGroup, said that the patient had severely damaged his shinbone in a traffic accident. He initially underwent two operations which attempted to mend it using metal rods, but he was left with a gap that no conventional form of surgery could effectively fix.
However scientists at Bonus took fat tissue from the patient and cultured it in a laboratory. They then used these cells to generate the missing bone cells, thereby creating an “injectable bone graft made of tiny bone particles, ready to be implanted in the patient's body.”
“After transplantation, the separated bone particles consolidate into solid, autologous bone tissue able to heal the injured bone,” the company reports.
Because the cells used to grow the bones are from the patient, this helps to minimise the risk of rejection.
The procedure was led by Dr Nimrod Rozen, head of orthopedics at Emek Medical Center in Afula. The doctors say that this treatment can be extrapolated to other types of fractures as well.
What happens in case of a broken leg?
A broken leg will be severely painful and may be swollen or bruised and you usually won't be able to walk on it.
First, a doctor will give you painkillers and may fix a splint to your leg to secure it in position and prevent further damage.
For severe pain, you may be given pain-killing gas through a face mask or medication through a drip into a vein. An X-ray is often necessary to assess the fracture.
If the broken bone is still in position, you'll usually just need a plaster cast. This holds the bone in place so it can heal.
If there's a lot of swelling, you may just have a splint or cast around the back half of your leg until the swelling goes down. A full cast can be fitted a few days later.
Boon for osteoporosis patients?
This new treatment comes as a boon for patients who suffer from osteoporosis as worldwide there are more than 8.9 million fractures annually, resulting in an osteoporotic fracture every 3 seconds.
By 2050, the worldwide incidence of hip fracture in men is projected to increase by 310% and 240% in women, compared to rates in 1990.
Furthermore, a new audit report released by the International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF) showed that the incidence of hip fracture has increased two-to-three-fold in most Asian countries over the past 30 years and half of the world’s fractures will occur in Asia by 2050.
At present most treatments, prevention and education efforts are limited to urban areas, whereas people in rural areas have little knowledge of osteoporosis or access to prevention programs, and diagnostic and treatment facilities.
In the most populous countries like China and India, the majority of the population lives in rural areas, where hip fractures are often treated conservatively at home instead of surgically in hospitals.
This leads to premature death for as many as one in five, immense personal suffering, lost productivity and long-term dependence on family members.
References
https://www.iofbonehealth.org/facts-statistics
http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/health/Fracture-rates-rising-in-Asia/article16882882.ece