Stem Cells in Sports Medicine
Posted by Pete Shanks May 29, 2014
Biopolitical Times
CC Sabathia, a starting pitcher for the New York Yankees, is making $23 million this year, and the same or more for at least the next two, maybe three years. But his knee hurts, which probably explains why he's been having a lousy season. It turns out that he has degenerative problems in his right knee, "which required a cortisone shot and stem cell injections."
Some stem cell treatments are controversial, and illegal in the U.S. (Why else would Texas-based Celltex now be treating U.S. patients in Mexico?) But the reinjection of adult stem cells extracted from your own bone marrow, and not altered, is in fact legitimate. How much that helps, and for what conditions, is another question. The evidence that it speeds up healing is "largely anecdotal in human patients."
The go-to guy for stem cell work seems to be Dr. James Andrews, of the Andrews Sports Medicine & Orthopaedic Center and the American Sports Medicine Institute. He is also an advisor to IntelliCel BioSciences, Inc. He's a 71-year-old orthopedic surgeon based in Birmingham, Alabama and Pensacola, Florida who is known to have worked on thousands of sports stars over the years.
The stem-cell approach to sports medicine is relatively new. ESPN reported, in December 2012:
For the past three years, however, Andrews has been experimenting with a new strategy. "Stem cells," he says. "What we call biologics. They're on their way, and that will be a transformational event." Very quietly - "We don't advertise it," Andrews says, "and we don't want to sensationalize it" - he and his colleagues at clinics in Birmingham, Ala., and Gulf Breeze, Fla., have been performing stem cell injections on professional athletes. He won't name names, but Andrews has mostly employed stem cells in the deteriorated knees of football players, and virtually all of them have reported significant decreases in pain and inflammation. "It's early," he says, "but the results have been remarkable."
He told Fox Sports in January 2014:
I keep predicting the next thing is biologics - stem cell therapy, gene therapy, robotic surgery. That's what we're really working on right now. We haven't gotten to the research basis that we need to prove how to handle stem cell therapy and gene therapy, but it's coming. In those cases, we're hoping to biologically enhance the healing process. For example, make ACL surgery heal better, longer and quicker. That's not a performance-enhancing situation. It's a healing-enhancement situation. It's perfectly legal and hopeful.
Yankee outfielder Carlos Beltran headed for Andrews this month, too. The doctor "confirmed the diagnosis of a bone spur in the right elbow" but there are no reports of stem cell treatment, which would likely follow rather than replace the surgery that may be needed. Reports also suggest that Sabathia may need surgery "at the latest, in the offseason." The best case seems to be that he is out till July. And he may have to settle for the $5 million buy-out for 2017.
Previously on Biopolitical Times: