Beaumont Hospital researchers get $1.5M to study arthritis after injury

The U.S. Defense Department has awarded Royal Oak, Mich.-based Beaumont Hospital a $1.5 million grant to advance its research into a painful knee problem called post-traumatic osteoarthritis, NBC-affiliate TV station WDIV reports.

Post-traumatic osteoarthritis is arthritis that occurs after an injury. The researchers are focused on cases that develop after the rupture of the anterior cruciate ligament, or ACL, which stabilizes the knee.

"Post-traumatic osteoarthritis isn't something that just affects the military, it's not something that just affects athletes, it affects everybody," said Kevin Baker, PhD, director of orthopedic research at Beaumont Hospital.

Patients who do not undergo surgery are almost 100 percent more likely to develop post-traumatic osteoarthritis in their knee, but even patients who do have their ACL repaired still develop arthritis 50 percent  to 60 percent of the time, Dr. Baker said.

The research team is testing an approach that would slow down or prevent those issues by changing the immune system's response to an ACL rupture and encouraging a patient's own stem cells to slow down or eliminate the joint degeneration.

"We give a medication that encourages stem cells to come out of bone marrow, and those stem cells, once they come out of bone marrow, they know where to go. They home to the site of the injury," Dr. Baker said.

Since the research is still in the early stages, the research team is not sure how long it could take until this treatment method is available to patients. They aim to have some of those answers in the next few years.

"We think that there's a high potential for helping a lot of patients," Dr. Baker said.

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