14-time Grand Slam winner, Rafael Nadal, will undergo stem cell treatment on his injured back in Barcelona this week. Several big name athletes have traveled across the world seeking this treatment, including the NFL’s Peyton Manning, the NBA’s Pau Gasol, and the MLB’s Bartolo Colon, among others.
Nadal’s Doctor, Angel Ruiz-Cotorro, told the Associated Press: “We are going to put cells in a joint in his spine.”
No stranger to stem cell treatment, the number three tennis player in the world underwent a similar procedure on his knee last year. The injuries have been adding up for Nadal recently. Just last week he had an emergency appendectomy that brought his season to an end.
Don’t be confused. These stem cells are not the ones under vigorous ethical debate in the United States, but rather taken directly from the person being treated. Stem cell treatment is considered perfectly legal by many professional sports leagues. The NFL considers it a medical treatment rather than a performance-enhancing substance. Leading sports physician Dr. James Andrews has performed stem cell treatment on several hundred pro athletes in the U.S. over the past three years.
Mesenchymal stem cells are found in bone marrow and fat tissue; and are most commonly used in these athlete treatments. These cells can grow into new bone, cartilage, muscle, or connective tissue. helping to speed along injury recovery. Currently, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) limits this treatment to the injection of the unaltered harvested cells directly to the site of the injury.
Many athletes travel outside the country to receive an enhanced treatment currently illegal in the United States. International labs often culture the cells taken from a player’s body of a 10-14 day period. Rather than harvesting around 10,000 cells, they are able to yield around 2 million.
In an interview with Sports Illustrated, Pittsburgh Steelers’ Orthopedic Surgeon, Jim Bradley, says, “This is why people go to the Cayman Islands, to Russia, to North Korea, to Japan, to Germany, because we can’t multiply stem cells here. When my NFL guys ask me, ‘Where would I go for this?’ I have a very good answer for them. I’m not going to tell you where I tell them to go, but it is not in the U.S.”
As biologic research continues to improve, the U.S. will likely become more accepting of stem cell treatments. Athletes will be able to recovery from injury more quickly than ever before and not have to travel overseas to do it.
“We have had one big revelation in sports medicine over the last 50 years, and that was the arthroscope,” Andrews says.
“I’ve been looking for the next wave, and I think the biologics, particularly stem-cell therapy and enhancement of the healing properties, will be it. We’ve been saying that since the new decade of this new millennium, so we’re already behind.”