Athletes can live with muscle strains, but a torn ligament or tendon is a serious matter. Every year, surgeons in the US perform about 500,000 operations on tendons and ligaments, which usually recover slowly and incompletely. But faster, better healing may be on the way: A Report Journal of Clinical Investigation today describes proteins that, at least in rats, favor the growth of the connective tissue
results. the emergence of bone repair studies. For years, Vicki Rosen and colleagues at the Institute of Genetics Inc., in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have been experimenting with proteins that induce undifferentiated stem cells to divide and form new bone. They produced factors using recombinant DNA technology and implanted under the skin and in the rat muscle, where they cause new bone to form. Doctors have also successfully used these factors as an experimental treatment for severe bone fractures in over 1,000 human patients worldwide.
During their investigations on rats, Rosen's team was surprised to find that three proteins of the bone inducing growth and differentiation factors --called 5, 6 and 7 - growth of what appeared to be the connective tissue, not bone triggered. Under the electron microscope, for example, they found the induced tissue "showed a very orderly arrangement of collagen bundles," form fibers of the size of those found in tendons and ligaments. "These proteins may have a very large capacity to repair tendons and ligaments injured," says Rosen.
The work has impressed experts, including Marshall Urist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who discovered bone inducing factors there are more than 30 years If confirmed, these new factors of growth and differentiation could lead to great advances in orthopedic surgery, he said. "in the 21st century, surgeons can be used for the repair of tendons and ligaments. "
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