Regen Medicine: The Difference between Therapy and Procedure

Do a cursory internet search on regenerative medicine and you might walk away believing that people are dying every day as a result of stem cell injections. Why? Because sensational news headlines make it sound as though stem cell treatments and PRP injections are as dangerous as walking down a busy interstate during rush hour.

What many of the stories fail to explain is that there is a difference between therapy and procedure. Those who put out such stories seem more than willing to dismiss the potential of regenerative medicine in its entirety due to isolated incidents that have nothing to do with the safety and efficacy of PRP injections, stem cell injections, and other regenerative medicine procedures.

While many of the nation’s media outlets have sensationalized a recent story of more than a dozen patients hospitalized after receiving stem cell treatments, a small handful are being honest. Consider the following headline from FOX 5 Atlanta:

“CDC: patients hospitalized because of contaminated umbilical cord blood stem cell product”

This headline hits it right on the head without sensationalizing or misleading. FOX 5 reporter Dale Russell seems to fully understand the difference between therapy and procedure.

The Back Story

So what actually happened here? Apparently, as many as 13 patients receiving umbilical cord blood stem cell therapy were hospitalized earlier in 2019 with serious bacterial infections. In reporting the infections, the CDC warned consumers to be cautious about certain kinds of regenerative medicine procedures. We have been urged to be particularly cautious about procedures that do not involve autologous stem cells or platelet-rich plasma.

Autologous material is biological material donated by the person being treated, explains regenerative medicine supplier Apex Biologix. In other words, an autologous procedure designed to treat osteoarthritis would require you to provide your own PRP or stem cells. Not only was the biological material involved in the CDC report not autologous, but it wasn’t even taken from adult donors. It was harvested from umbilical cord blood.

CDC reports say that the cord blood used in the targeted procedures was contaminated with bacteria. As such, many of the patients who received injections were subsequently infected. This is not a good thing, to be sure. But their experiences are not a wholesale indictment of stem cell therapy or regenerative medicine.

Contamination a Separate Issue

Many of the headlines sensationalizing the story mentioned “dangerous” and “unproven” stem cell therapies. Some of those headlines implied that regenerative medicine is, on the whole, dangerous and something to be completely avoided. But what happened in this most recent case is not an issue of regenerative medicine safety. It is a distinct and separate issue of contamination.

The fact is that the CDC is not calling the safety and efficacy of regenerative medicine into question here. Their concern is that some providers are not taking the steps necessary to ensure that regenerative medicine products are not contaminated.

Things would be no different from the CDC’s perspective if vaccine manufacturers were sending contaminated products to doctors and hospitals. As for the news media, they would not start calling into question the safety of vaccinations because of said contamination. The science on vaccines is settled. Contamination is a completely separate issue.

Any and all regenerative medicine procedures that utilize autologous material and follow current FDA regulations are safe. So let us not make blanket statements that imply regenerative medicine is unsafe. Let’s make a distinction between safe therapy and unsafe procedures. Otherwise, we run the risk of dismissing regenerative medicine before we fully understand just how effective it can be.