This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.

Vascular and bone tissue growth increased with inhibited movement, study shows

Add topic to email alerts

Receive an email when new articles are posted on

Please provide your email address to receive an email when new articles are posted on .

Subscribe

Added to email alerts

You've successfully added to your alerts. You will receive an email when new content is published.

Click Here to Manage Email Alerts

You've successfully added to your alerts. You will receive an email when new content is published.

Click Here to Manage Email Alerts

Back to Healio

We were unable to process your request. Please try again later. If you continue to have this issue please contact customerservice@slackinc.com.

Back to Healio

Immobilization of tissue and bone injuries has shown to yield improved vascular and bone regeneration over treatments that allow early movement in the healing process, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers used a polymer scaffold seeded with recombinant human bone morphogenetic protein-2 (rhBMP-2) to treat a bone defect in two groups of rats. After removing 8 mm of femur bone, they applied the protein and attached plates to the bone with screws in one group to prevent mechanical forces from applying to the bone during the healing process, according to the study. In the other group, the plates attached to the bone added compressive load but prevented twisting and bending to the limbs.

“Our finding that mechanical stresses caused by movement can disrupt the initial formation and growth of new blood vessels supports the advice doctors have been giving their patients for years to limit activity early in the healing process,” Robert E. Guldberg, PhD, professor at the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, stated in a press release. “However, our findings also suggest applying mechanical stresses to the wound later on can significantly improve healing through a process called adaptive remodeling.”

The results showed exerting mechanical forces immediately at the start of healing inhibited vascular growth by 66%, reduced vascular connectivity by 91% and reduced bone growth by 75%, according to the study. After waiting to put force on the bone after 4 weeks, researchers discovered that bone formation increased by 20% and average blood vessel thickness had increased.

“We found that having a very stable environment initially is very important because mechanical stresses applied early on disrupted very small vessels that were forming,” Guldberg said. “If you wait until those vessels have grown in and they’re a little more mature, applying a mechanical stimulus then induces remodeling so that you end up with a more robust vascular network.”

Reference:

• Boerckel JD, Uhrig BA, Willett NJ, et al. Mechanical regulation of vascular growth and tissue regeneration in vivo. Proc Nat Acad Sci USA. 2011; Published online before print. doi:10.1073/pnas.1107019108.

Follow OrthoSuperSite.com on Twitter