Research

Registry Data Analysis: What We Do at Regenexx that Doesn’t Exist Elsewhere

There’s a super fascinating story about how mathematicians helped armor WWII bombers that can teach us about how to interpret Registry data in Orthobiologics. Let’s learn about how that impacts how we analyze our Registry data to help chose who should get our procedures. Let’s dig in. A WWII Bomber Problem For the pilots of…read more

Should We Be Adding HA to PRP? A Literature Review

As CMO of Regenexx, it’s my job to stay up to date on the research behind the latest trends in Orthobiologics research. One of those new things is adding common knee gel shots (HA) to PRP to improve knee arthritis results more than PRP alone. So let’s explore the high-level research supporting this idea and…read more

Can a PRP Injection Help Your Knee Cartilage Health?

Can a PRP injection help your cartilage? While we’ve had some indications based on animal models that platelet-rich plasma probably helps improve the quality of cartilage, we have had no definitive human evidence. Now a new study using sophisticated MRI techniques adds to that evidence. Imaging and Measuring Cartilage How do we measure the quality…read more

The Weak PRP Files: This Study Showed Good Clinical Results, But No Biomarker Changes

These past few weeks, we’ve seen what happens when academic physicians try to perform PRP studies. Their biggest mistake is often using very weakly concentrated blood that doesn’t meet the definition of PRP. This morning we’ll review a similar study that looked at knee arthritis biomarkers. Prior Weak or Fake PRP Studies As you now…read more

What a New Bone Marrow Knee Study Can Teach Us About QA

QA is a term that you hear more often in industries like manufacturing or engineering, not in medicine. However, the bone marrow concentrate procedure for knee arthritis has so many moving parts that QA is key. So today we’ll review a new research paper and also learn how they failed on several key QA metrics.…read more

Why Bad PRP Studies Matter: The Katz PRP JAMA Editorial

We’ve seen a rash of bad PRP studies with negative results lately. Given that we have dozens of positive studies showing that PRP works, the average physician might say, “Why is this a big deal?” After all, we physicians are used to scenarios where most of the research is positive with a handful of negative…read more

More Fake PRP Studies

I’ve covered a few different “PRP” studies that didn’t actually use real PRP. However, none were as ridiculous as a study that was recently published in JAMA on knee arthritis. Let’s dig in. When is PRP not PRP? PRP stands for platelet-rich plasma. The idea is supposed to be that PRP concentrates platelets many times…read more

How Another Bad Surgical Orthobiologics Paper Can Teach Us About QC

If there’s one journal that keeps regularly getting it wrong on orthobiologics, it’s the journal Arthroscopy. So let’s dig into a recent paper published in that journal. By understanding why it can’t support its conclusions we’ll learn quite a bit about the quality control of a bone marrow aspiration. Why? Because if you’re a doctor…read more