Researchers are finding that the FDA-approved drug teriparatide combines with stem cells to heal bones in older patients at rate similar to young people. Notes News-Medical.net,
Baseline research presented in February at the Orthopaedic Research Society meeting revealed that of 145 patients who had an unhealed bone fracture – half of them for six months or longer – 93 percent showed significant healing and pain control after being on teriparatide for only eight to 12 weeks. These findings were enough to convince the National Institutes of Health to fund a clinical trial underway in Rochester, and if the preliminary data are any indication, researchers may have discovered a new, in-the-body stem cell therapy that can jumpstart the body’s natural healing process in bones.
