PRP Studies and Trials
Even though there is not an abundance of clinical research in the area of PRP, studies became more common after 2009. In fact, nearly a dozen clinical research trials took place within just a few years of each other and showed promising results with regard to the treatment of injured tendons in human subjects. In 1910, a watershed year for PRP research, a randomized, controlled study on PRP appeared in JAMA. Because the single study was so widely publicized, and did not report significant evidence of the efficacy of PRP, many academicians and researchers dismissed PRP as useless.
Fortunately, in the same year, 2010, a Netherlands-based study was more positive. One-hundred subjects who suffered from lateral epicondylitis were treated with either PRP or corticosteroid treatments. After one year of follow-up, the PRP subjects showed significant improvement compared to the other group. This result went a long way toward reviving the confidence of the scientific community in regard to PRP therapy.
Additional research was done on the effectiveness of PRP in the treatment of osteoarthritis. After 2010, there were two key studies that demonstrated PRP as a possibly efficacious treatment for arthritis, especially in the knee. After the 2-month follow-up point of one such study, the only subjects who showed marked improvement of their condition were the ones who had received PRP therapy. Similar results were achieved in a later study that tested PRP’s effectiveness in helping subjects with ankle and foot pain.
PRP Therapy Today
Perhaps the single biggest issue facing PRP today is the absence of standardization. Currently, for example, there are no accepted, universal protocols for any of the preparation processes, like activation techniques of growth factors, selection of specific injection sites, and other procedures that take place immediately pre- or post-injection. This lack of common standards for PRP makes it hard to set up tests to evaluate efficacy. The result is a low level of acceptance by the academic research community and thus the insurance industry.
With so many different procedures in existence among PRP practitioners, it is nearly impossible to make objective evaluations of comparable clinical trials. For example, one recent study noted that even though PRP treatments in a group of tendinopathy subjects showed promising results, non-standardized procedures stood in the way of drawing any significant conclusions from the trial.
Post time: Oct-13-2022