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Osteoarthritis is the most common form of arthritis in the U.S., affecting nearly 27 million adults. It is currently an incurable disease in which the joints deteriorate. Now, a therapy that has been used in eye surgery and to heal the skin of burn victims is being used for the first time in knees. This new form of treatment involves stem cells from amniotic fluid.
As a professional photographer, climbing up step ladders and walking down stairs are part of the daily grind for 65-year-old Linda Schwartz.
“There’s constant activity; you’re moving the whole time, really,” Schwartz told Ivanhoe.
Adam Yanke, M.D., an orthopedic surgeon at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, explained, “It’s like the rubber on the tire. So as you start to lose the rubber in your tire and the rim hits the road, that’s what happens when you have bone on bone arthritis and you’ve lost all the cartilage in your knee.”
Dr. Yanke enrolled Schwartz in an experimental new therapy that involved injecting amniotic fluid that contained stem cells donated by healthy mothers into the knees of osteoarthritis patients.
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