Sport is big business. The continued welfare and performance of the stars at the top of every major game is a matter of great financial concern to the clubs, nations and sponsors working behind the scenes. And so a lot of money is poured into developing new treatments for these people – and some of that research ends up benefiting amateur athletes, and the general public more broadly.
A few areas of research stand out as particularly promising. They work alongside conventional forms of treatment, and in some cases as replacements for those methods. Compensation claims for personal injuries might be partly put toward these new and experimental kinds of treatment.
Sports Injuries and their Impact
Athletes tend to suffer from injuries of two varieties. There are chronic injuries, which build up over time, and there are acute injuries, which are typically caused by a single moment. Wear and tear to a given overused muscle or ligament might fall into the former category, while a broken leg from a mistimed tackle or collision might fall into the latter.
Typically, rehabilitation requires a combination of surgery, physiotherapy, nutrition and time. However, large gains can often be found when we delve into the details of how a recovery is being fuelled.
What is Platelet-Rich Plasma (PRP)?
The liquid part of the blood in your body is called plasma. It’s packed with red and white cells, proteins, and platelets – which are tiny cells that play a crucial role in blood clotting and healing.
When plasma has an elevated concentration of platelets in it, healing in a specific area of the body can be better supported. This is how Platelet Rich Plasma Therapy works: blood is removed from the patient, spun in a centrifuge to produce a higher concentration of platelets, and the result is injected back into the affected tissue.
This method has been linked with a reduced need for anti-inflammatory treatments like opioids. Moreover, there’s no chance that the body will reject the injection, since it originated in the same patient that ultimately uses it.
What is Stem Cell Therapy?
Stem cell therapy has been a subject of great controversy, because of the ethical questions it raises. Stem cells are highly adaptable cells, from which all of the other, more specialised cells in the body are created. Blood cells, brain cells, pancreas cells – they all start life as stem cells.
With the help of harvested stem cells, damaged tissue can be more quickly repaired. This is of particular interest to people with serious diseases like Parkinson’s, cancer and type 1 diabetes. But it can also be used to aid in recovery in athletes.
The controversy surrounding stem cells comes from the use of embryonic stem cells, which come from embryos which are between three to five days old. This practice has been questioned by a number of religious groups, and raises questions of consent more broadly. On top of this, we should treat some of the claims made by private clinics with a healthy degree of scepticism – especially when no regulator is involved.