Harvest Technologies Corporation, a Plymouth company, gets a mention in a NY Times story on a new trend in sports medicine: platelet-rich plasma or P.R.P. The company supplies equipment for P.R.P. treatments.
While there are no official statistics on P.R.P. treatment, all agree that it has exploded on the scene, propelled by testimonials from celebrity athletes.
Part of its appeal was that it made sense. Blood contains platelets that secrete growth factors that, in turn, can help tissue heal. So if a patient’s own platelets are injected into the injury site, they might speed recovery. And since it is the patient’s own platelets, the treatment is unlikely to be harmful.
The treatment, and others like it, are also unproven, the story notes. The piece ends with mention of a “popular treatment” that "leapt to the public and medical world’s attention this year when Bartolo Colon, a pitcher for the New York Yankees, made an astonishing comeback from elbow injuries and a torn rotator cuff that had plagued him for years and had kept him from pitching for all of 2010. "
In May, Mr. Colon and his doctor, Joseph R. Purita, an orthopedic surgeon in Boca Raton, Fla., reported that Mr. Colon was treated with P.R.P. and “stem cells” — his own fat and bone marrow cells, injected into his shoulder and elbow. Dr. Purita worked with the Harvest Technologies Corporation, a Massachusetts company that also supplies equipment for P.R.P.
The opening scenes seem familiar to those who followed the saga of P.R.P.
Once again, there is a rationale behind the treatment, said Rocky Tuan, director of the
Center for Cellular and Molecular Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
The reasoning began with questions about why P.R.P. is not clearly effective. The problem may be that growth factors released from platelets need cells that can respond. But most tissues in joints and tendons have very few cells.
“That’s where stem cells come in,” Dr. Tuan said. Fat and bone marrow contain stem cells that might grow into joint or tendon if they were placed in the right environment. And if a patient also gets an injection of P.R.P., a tendon or joint might actually heal.
The key word, of course, is “might.”
For now, Dr. Tuan said, “no systematic study has been done.”
Improving patient outcomes by enhancing the body’s normal
healing process using adult stem cells and growth factors."