Gender Difference and Therapeutic Effectiveness of Platelets Rich Plasma Intra-Articular Injections Among Elderly with Knee Osteoarthritis

Abstract

Knee Osteoarthritis (OA) represents a large medical burden on the elderly population but still does not have a curable therapy and most of the available treatment strategies target the control of disease symptoms. For that the need for new therapeutic strategies aiming for symptomatic relief as well as cartilage repair has been emerged in the last years. Among these are growth factors that have been studied as effective factors for the healing of cartilage in OA with promising results. This thesis was conducted to determine the role of intra-articular injection of PRP in management of knee osteoarthritis among elderly and to assess the effect of gender deference on clinical response. It is a one arm clinical trial study conducted on 44 subjects 60 years & older, Recruited from outpatient clinics and inpatients wards of Ain Shams University Hospital and followed up for 12 months. PRP were aspirated from patients own blood after specific technique of centrifugation and separation then re-injected into both knees in the same session.