It healed a racehorse – and will help Alison to ski again
DREAM Alliance was a champion racehorse which damaged his heel tendon at the Aintree festival in 2008. But after stem cell therapy, which involved injecting cells from his bone marrow back into the damaged area, the thoroughbred went on to win the 2009 Welsh Grand National.
And now the same pioneering therapy means that an injury to the Achilles, the main tendon at the back of the human ankle, is not enough to put anyone in the knacker’s yard just yet.
The first trials have yielded hugely positive results at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in Stanmore, Middlesex.
Bone marrow is taken from the patient’s hip. Stem cells are extracted then grown in the laboratory over several weeks. They are then reinjected into the tendon while the patient receives physiotherapy.
Results set to be released later this month will reveal eight of ten patients in the trial saw their injuries improve significantly following the treatment.
Andy Goldberg, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon and head of the foot and ankle unit at the Schoen Clinic in London, says: ‘Scans showed the majority of the tissue had returned to normal elasticity.’
Alison James had suffered from ankle pain and stiffness, diagnosed as Achilles tendinopathy, for 20 years with no known cause. She was enrolled in a trial after reading about Mr Goldberg’s work in The Mail on Sunday. The 52-year-old from Hale, Cheshire, was in such agony that it affected her sleep, and her mobility became so restricted that she struggled to even walk her dog.
Alison, who works for her family’s security business, says: ‘It was really restricting my day-to-day life and there wasn’t anything I could do. I used to keep mobile by going to the gym but the pain would keep me awake at night, I’d get really stiff and I had to walk so slowly. I knew I had to do something.’
Alison travelled to the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in August last year to have stem cells harvested from her pelvis under a general anaesthetic.
These were multiplied in the laboratory and injected back into her right Achilles tendon two months later.
She says: ‘Within weeks the pain had reduced and later the stiffness had gone.
‘It feels stronger every day, and more robust. I’ve booked a skiing holiday with friends, I’m back exercising again, and the outlook is so much more positive than it was.’