Autologous adult live cultured chondrocytes implantation show good mid-term efficacy in cartilage defects of the knee joint

• Of the14 patients enrolled in the study, all patients completed the six month follow-up and 11 completed the four year follow-up.

• The IKDC score improved significantly from 32.84±9.25 at baseline to 67.49±13.03 at six months (mean difference [MD] 34.66±13.00, p < 0.0001) and to 60.18±10.33 at four years (MD 28.21±15.14, p=0.0001).

• The VAS score reduced from 72.00±14.40 at baseline to 16.64±17.03 at six months (MD 55.36±24.50, p< 0.0001) and further to 12.72±9.05 at four years (MD 62.09±10.66, p< 0.0001).

• All patients showed improvement on MRI of the knee joint.

• No adverse events were reported.

The authors concluded that - this study shows that gel-based ACI alleviates pain and improves functional activity with no side-effects in patients with articular cartilage defects of the knee. Overall, CARTIGROW® showed good mid-term efficacy; however, substantiating these results in real clinical setting would be of future interest.

Further reading:

Efficacy and safety of CARTIGROW® in patients with articular cartilage defects of the knee joint: a four year prospective studys

Shirish Pathak, Deepak Chaudhary, K. Raghuveer Reddy et al

International Orthopaedics (2022) 46:1313–1321

https://doi.org/10.1007/s00264-022-05369-2