What does the Mayo Clinic say about PRP injections for Joint Pain?

What kind of patient outcomes are you and your colleagues at Mayo Clinic seeing when treating knee OA with PRP injections? This is something we do frequently. To date, staff at Mayo Clinic in Rochester have treated more than 1,100 patients with PRP, with no serious adverse events. Most patients tolerate this treatment very well and experience only mild postinjection discomfort, with maybe a little bit of swelling. Many of our patients with knee OA report from 6 to 12 months of pain relief after treatment with PRP. We usually see a 60% to 70% chance of success, with success defined as at least a 50% improvement in pain and function for 6 to 12 months after the injection. What does available published research say about PRP vs. bone marrow aspirate concentrate (BMAC) injections for knee OA? Patients have heard a lot about the idea that injection of stem cells, or bone marrow aspirate concentrate (BMAC), can transform and potentially regenerate cartilage. Unfortunately, there's no data or strong evidence to back up some of the claims being made in advertisements. But let's talk about what studies have shown us thus far. In a study conducted by researchers at Mayo Clinic in Florida and published in the American Journal of Sports Medicine in 2017, the researchers followed 25 patients with bilateral mild to moderate knee osteoarthritis. The researchers injected one knee with saline and one knee with BMAC, and they followed patients for six months. Overall, the researchers found no difference in pain scores between the two treatments. In two prospective, randomized trials published in 2020 and 2022, researchers took 90 patients with mild to moderate OA and treated half with PRP injections and half with BMAC. In the first study, published in the Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine in 2020, they found that there was no difference between the two groups in functional outcomes and pain scores 12 months after treatment. In the second study, published in the American Journal of Sports Medicine in 2022, they concluded that injecting BMAC had no advantage over PRP at 24 months after treatment. To summarize, there have not been any definitive human studies that show that treatment with BMAC regrows cartilage. And the study data available to date has not shown any associated benefit(s) superior to PRP in the treatment of knee OA.