5 ms·

So are stem cells a 'real' thing now? I can never tell, and I'm not sure that I trust a website called 'medicalxpress' (which has a nag screen that ominously wa

So are stem cells a 'real' thing now? I can never tell, and I'm not sure that I trust a website called 'medicalxpress' (which has a nag screen that ominously warns me about the 'consequences' of my using an adblocker). I have torn shoulder labrum that I've been living with for 8ish years now. It doesn't affect me enough to need surgery, but given the option I'd love to fix it without having to go under the knife. I sporadically hear about stem cell injections as a possible fix, and as a sports fan there are always stories about athletes using stem cells to repair serious injuries. Sometimes these stories involve the athletes traveling to another country (Germany, Thailand, Mexico, somewhere) where stem cell treatments are legal outside of the FDA's bureaucratic purview. (The FDA has been working on authorizing European sunscreen for the last 25 years, BTW). The UFC now advertises a Mexican stem cell clinic. I asked my ortho last year about them and she said 'maybe!', which I suppose is better than 'no they're a total fraud'. Are these claims even approaching reality? Is the science of stem cells getting closer at all?

bix6 2y ago
Marc Benioff said UCSF used Yamanaka’s techniques to regrow his Achilles in place. So it seems that we are getting there.
- hash872 2y ago
  Unfortunately my disposable income to spend on experimental medical treatments is slightly less than Marc Benioff's :(
  - bix6 2y ago
    If only we could all be so rich. Have you looked into PRP? My neighbor got an injection for his shoulder, $3k here, although apparently you can find it for way less.
    - cjbgkagh 2y ago
      I had PRP done in 2008 for $1K and it healed a 8 year old persistent knee injury within 3 months. That said I’m not sure if it’s necessarily the stem cells that did the healing or just the general irritation of the area that reminds the body that it might want to reexamine healing that specific area. I believe the French were injecting irritants in the 90s (forgot what chemical it was). Because PRP is injecting something sourced from your own body it can skip many regularity steps that would be required by some other chemical. I don’t know how much of PRP is simply a low regulation irritant and how much of it is stem cells, my guess it’s more the former than the latter. Edit; Googling it now: Prolotherapy which has a long rich history, modern PRP alternatives seem to be salt and or sugar water based. Seems like some studies suggest there isn’t much difference in outcomes between salt water injections and PRP injections. Addendum; it was one of the most painful surgeries I’ve done, I’m anesthetic resistant and they used basically none off it. An ultrasound was used for guiding the needle. The injury location was in the back of the knee and they wanted to be careful they didn’t inject into a nerve. When asked how would they know if they hit a nerve, they responded “your screams of pain will go up an octave”. They did hit a nerve and I let them know it.
- Aurornis 2y ago
  Be careful with anecdotes. The history of stem cell treatments is full of promising claims that later failed to differentiate from standard treatments. A common technique in the past was to use stem cell therapy on a lot of candidate patients who had some chance of recovering normally. When some subset recovered normally, they would champion them as stem cell success stories. It's an interesting field, but anecdotes are not the right way to look at it. Even when they come from famous figures.
  - bix6 2y ago
    Yamanaka won a Nobel prize for the work so while I shared an anecdote, it is more than that.
Nursie 2y ago
> So are stem cells a 'real' thing now? Always were a real possibility and under active research but the unregulated treatments you read about in Mexico, Thailand etc were probably snake-oil rather than targeted, effective medicine. The unregulated stuff has alway seemed to involve just injecting some sort of stem-cell milkshake into the affected area and hoping it does something useful. The attached article describes a more involved process. Both things can be true - those clinics are doing bullshit medicine, and stem-cell treatments can maybe be made to work.
- inglor_cz 2y ago
  The question is whether this "more involved process" builds upon experience from the first years of almost-quackery. It wouldn't be the first time in healthcare. People have eyes, observe their results and adapt.
  - Nursie 2y ago
    Seems unlikely, far more likely that it has built upon the history of actual research, than the exploitative practices of those clinics that latch on and sell snake-oil.
    - inglor_cz 2y ago
      People move around, including doctors. Even knowing what doesn't work can help future patients. For an example, most of urgent medicine (e.g. battlefields) in history was built on this sort of chaotic progress, and not on meticulous scientific research.
      - Nursie 2y ago
        It's not progress if it's just exploiting something people associate with high-tech medical magic, but that isn't contributing to the literature or sum of human knowledge, merely to the bank-accounts of the cowboys running the show. Why are you so keen to attribute scientific breakthroughs to ... well to quacks? On the one hand we have bona-fide research by people understanding the science, using animal models to test and understand, building up sound scientific basis for treatment etc, and on the other we have people injecting god knows what into anyone with enough money, some of it human-origin, some of it not, very unlikely to be contributing to any corpus of knowledge, all because rubes heard "stem cells" on the news and think they're magic. These are not serious doctors working on breakthroughs by disregarding the stuffy old rules that hold them back (though that's certainly one way they like to sell themselves), they're quacks selling bullshit and scamming people.
drak0n1c 2y ago
Medicalxpress is a subsidiary of the more known https://phys.org/ https://phys.org/ which is a decades-old aggregator of published material containing innovative studies and engineering techniques. They write their own summaries in an AP/Reuters style but with more quantified detail and less exaggeration than the usual pop media and university PR pieces. A bit like Quanta Magazine, great for keeping tabs on new findings with clear and consistent hyperlinks to the source material.
sirolimus 2y ago
Medicalexpress is a reputable medical news website. Regarding the adblocker, how else would u earn money.
ninetyninenine 2y ago
The FDA doesn't even go over domestic supplements. Most domestic supplements don't even contain the stated ingredients and many contain illegal ingredients. Something like 25 years to authorize European sunscreen looks like a corrupt move. Some business interest definitely is influencing it to make it happen. >Are these claims even approaching reality? Is the science of stem cells getting closer at all? I've heard many many anecdotal claims of this working. We'll have to see.
caycep 2y ago
You'd think a technical site like ycombinator, ppl would post directly from pubmed/europe pmc...I mean, ppl post CS papers from Arxiv regularly...
- bragr 2y ago
  I think in practice most papers are too technical to be meaningfully read by people outside the field. I struggle with some CS papers especially depending subfield. I could probably get through this stem cell paper if I had 8 hours and a medical reference dictionary, and it still would probably involve several side quests reading up on related topics and citations before I could meaningfully deliver an opinion. That makes these science reporting sites a necessary evil IMHO.
carabiner 2y ago
I had type 2 SLAP tear (lemme guess, rock climbing?) confirmed by MRI with dye. It seemed to just... go asymptomatic after months of rest, gradual return to activity. Some guy on reddit said stem cells from mexico fixed his SLAP tear but he never went for a followup MRI so who knows.
- hash872 2y ago
  BJJ. Good luck, but just so you know- SLAP tears don't heal on their own. There's not enough bloodflow to the area, and the actual physical substance of the labrum for the both of us has been ripped apart. It may or may not bother you (mine doesn't 80% of the time), but it also never heals. So you're at risk of tearing it further, which then becomes a Big Deal. I stopped doing BJJ for this reason
  - carabiner 2y ago
    I'm well aware of all of that after multiple consultations with my surgeon.
BurningFrog 2y ago
I have some hope that, among the assorted mayhem, the Trump administration makes the FDA a bit more permissive.
- zombiwoof 2y ago
  Given RFK needs HGH and steroids to stay alive I think they will unregulate everything but the truth
bitwize 2y ago
Using IPSCs to regrow tissue, including nerve and connective tissue that just doesn't heal on its own, is definitely a thing that's about to happen. There have been promising clinical trials, and the techniques probably need to be refined to where they can be done safely at scale. But they're coming. These wildcat stem cell clinics in Central and South America promoted by bodybuilders, UFC people, and other athletes -- most of them are scams. The scammy ones inject stem cells at the site and sort of hope they do the right thing. Sometimes they do the wrong thing, and develop into cancer! Be aware that insurance, or your country's nationalized health care program, usually does not cover these clinics, and you will at best be paying tens of thousands of dollars out of your own pocket for a stem cell therapy that is at best highly experimental and may not have the effects you want. They operate Stateside too, my wife and I were approached by one. We took the free dinner and then noped out. But hey, your body, your choice. If it were me, I'd wait a bit for something that's a bit more proven, unless I were critically injured or ill. But it is coming, and it won't be long now.
- caycep 2y ago
  The easy way to tell: If the clinic is charging you to get stem cell therapy - probably a scam If the clinic is paying you to get stem cell therapy (most clinical trials include a stipend for study participants), and there's a legit entry on clinicaltrails.gov - likely legit.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

bix6 2y ago

Marc Benioff said UCSF used Yamanaka’s techniques to regrow his Achilles in place. So it seems that we are getting there.

hash872 2y ago
Unfortunately my disposable income to spend on experimental medical treatments is slightly less than Marc Benioff's :(
- bix6 2y ago
  If only we could all be so rich. Have you looked into PRP? My neighbor got an injection for his shoulder, $3k here, although apparently you can find it for way less.
  - cjbgkagh 2y ago
    I had PRP done in 2008 for $1K and it healed a 8 year old persistent knee injury within 3 months. That said I’m not sure if it’s necessarily the stem cells that did the healing or just the general irritation of the area that reminds the body that it might want to reexamine healing that specific area. I believe the French were injecting irritants in the 90s (forgot what chemical it was). Because PRP is injecting something sourced from your own body it can skip many regularity steps that would be required by some other chemical. I don’t know how much of PRP is simply a low regulation irritant and how much of it is stem cells, my guess it’s more the former than the latter. Edit; Googling it now: Prolotherapy which has a long rich history, modern PRP alternatives seem to be salt and or sugar water based. Seems like some studies suggest there isn’t much difference in outcomes between salt water injections and PRP injections. Addendum; it was one of the most painful surgeries I’ve done, I’m anesthetic resistant and they used basically none off it. An ultrasound was used for guiding the needle. The injury location was in the back of the knee and they wanted to be careful they didn’t inject into a nerve. When asked how would they know if they hit a nerve, they responded “your screams of pain will go up an octave”. They did hit a nerve and I let them know it.
Aurornis 2y ago
Be careful with anecdotes. The history of stem cell treatments is full of promising claims that later failed to differentiate from standard treatments. A common technique in the past was to use stem cell therapy on a lot of candidate patients who had some chance of recovering normally. When some subset recovered normally, they would champion them as stem cell success stories. It's an interesting field, but anecdotes are not the right way to look at it. Even when they come from famous figures.
- bix6 2y ago
  Yamanaka won a Nobel prize for the work so while I shared an anecdote, it is more than that.

Nursie 2y ago

> So are stem cells a 'real' thing now? Always were a real possibility and under active research but the unregulated treatments you read about in Mexico, Thailand etc were probably snake-oil rather than targeted, effective medicine. The unregulated stuff has alway seemed to involve just injecting some sort of stem-cell milkshake into the affected area and hoping it does something useful. The attached article describes a more involved process. Both things can be true - those clinics are doing bullshit medicine, and stem-cell treatments can maybe be made to work.

inglor_cz 2y ago
The question is whether this "more involved process" builds upon experience from the first years of almost-quackery. It wouldn't be the first time in healthcare. People have eyes, observe their results and adapt.
- Nursie 2y ago
  Seems unlikely, far more likely that it has built upon the history of actual research, than the exploitative practices of those clinics that latch on and sell snake-oil.
  - inglor_cz 2y ago
    People move around, including doctors. Even knowing what doesn't work can help future patients. For an example, most of urgent medicine (e.g. battlefields) in history was built on this sort of chaotic progress, and not on meticulous scientific research.
    - Nursie 2y ago
      It's not progress if it's just exploiting something people associate with high-tech medical magic, but that isn't contributing to the literature or sum of human knowledge, merely to the bank-accounts of the cowboys running the show. Why are you so keen to attribute scientific breakthroughs to ... well to quacks? On the one hand we have bona-fide research by people understanding the science, using animal models to test and understand, building up sound scientific basis for treatment etc, and on the other we have people injecting god knows what into anyone with enough money, some of it human-origin, some of it not, very unlikely to be contributing to any corpus of knowledge, all because rubes heard "stem cells" on the news and think they're magic. These are not serious doctors working on breakthroughs by disregarding the stuffy old rules that hold them back (though that's certainly one way they like to sell themselves), they're quacks selling bullshit and scamming people.

drak0n1c 2y ago

Medicalxpress is a subsidiary of the more known https://phys.org/ https://phys.org/ which is a decades-old aggregator of published material containing innovative studies and engineering techniques. They write their own summaries in an AP/Reuters style but with more quantified detail and less exaggeration than the usual pop media and university PR pieces. A bit like Quanta Magazine, great for keeping tabs on new findings with clear and consistent hyperlinks to the source material.

sirolimus 2y ago

Medicalexpress is a reputable medical news website. Regarding the adblocker, how else would u earn money.

ninetyninenine 2y ago

The FDA doesn't even go over domestic supplements. Most domestic supplements don't even contain the stated ingredients and many contain illegal ingredients. Something like 25 years to authorize European sunscreen looks like a corrupt move. Some business interest definitely is influencing it to make it happen. >Are these claims even approaching reality? Is the science of stem cells getting closer at all? I've heard many many anecdotal claims of this working. We'll have to see.

caycep 2y ago

You'd think a technical site like ycombinator, ppl would post directly from pubmed/europe pmc...I mean, ppl post CS papers from Arxiv regularly...

bragr 2y ago
I think in practice most papers are too technical to be meaningfully read by people outside the field. I struggle with some CS papers especially depending subfield. I could probably get through this stem cell paper if I had 8 hours and a medical reference dictionary, and it still would probably involve several side quests reading up on related topics and citations before I could meaningfully deliver an opinion. That makes these science reporting sites a necessary evil IMHO.

carabiner 2y ago

I had type 2 SLAP tear (lemme guess, rock climbing?) confirmed by MRI with dye. It seemed to just... go asymptomatic after months of rest, gradual return to activity. Some guy on reddit said stem cells from mexico fixed his SLAP tear but he never went for a followup MRI so who knows.

hash872 2y ago
BJJ. Good luck, but just so you know- SLAP tears don't heal on their own. There's not enough bloodflow to the area, and the actual physical substance of the labrum for the both of us has been ripped apart. It may or may not bother you (mine doesn't 80% of the time), but it also never heals. So you're at risk of tearing it further, which then becomes a Big Deal. I stopped doing BJJ for this reason
- carabiner 2y ago
  I'm well aware of all of that after multiple consultations with my surgeon.

BurningFrog 2y ago

I have some hope that, among the assorted mayhem, the Trump administration makes the FDA a bit more permissive.

zombiwoof 2y ago
Given RFK needs HGH and steroids to stay alive I think they will unregulate everything but the truth

bitwize 2y ago

Using IPSCs to regrow tissue, including nerve and connective tissue that just doesn't heal on its own, is definitely a thing that's about to happen. There have been promising clinical trials, and the techniques probably need to be refined to where they can be done safely at scale. But they're coming. These wildcat stem cell clinics in Central and South America promoted by bodybuilders, UFC people, and other athletes -- most of them are scams. The scammy ones inject stem cells at the site and sort of hope they do the right thing. Sometimes they do the wrong thing, and develop into cancer! Be aware that insurance, or your country's nationalized health care program, usually does not cover these clinics, and you will at best be paying tens of thousands of dollars out of your own pocket for a stem cell therapy that is at best highly experimental and may not have the effects you want. They operate Stateside too, my wife and I were approached by one. We took the free dinner and then noped out. But hey, your body, your choice. If it were me, I'd wait a bit for something that's a bit more proven, unless I were critically injured or ill. But it is coming, and it won't be long now.

caycep 2y ago
The easy way to tell: If the clinic is charging you to get stem cell therapy - probably a scam If the clinic is paying you to get stem cell therapy (most clinical trials include a stipend for study participants), and there's a legit entry on clinicaltrails.gov - likely legit.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]