I had PRP done in 2008 for $1K and it healed a 8 year old persistent knee injury within 3 months.
That said I’m not sure if it’s necessarily the stem cells that did the healing or just the general irritation of the area that reminds the body that it might want to reexamine healing that specific area. I believe the French were injecting irritants in the 90s (forgot what chemical it was). Because PRP is injecting something sourced from your own body it can skip many regularity steps that would be required by some other chemical. I don’t know how much of PRP is simply a low regulation irritant and how much of it is stem cells, my guess it’s more the former than the latter.
Edit; Googling it now: Prolotherapy which has a long rich history, modern PRP alternatives seem to be salt and or sugar water based. Seems like some studies suggest there isn’t much difference in outcomes between salt water injections and PRP injections.
Addendum; it was one of the most painful surgeries I’ve done, I’m anesthetic resistant and they used basically none off it. An ultrasound was used for guiding the needle. The injury location was in the back of the knee and they wanted to be careful they didn’t inject into a nerve. When asked how would they know if they hit a nerve, they responded “your screams of pain will go up an octave”. They did hit a nerve and I let them know it.
That said I’m not sure if it’s necessarily the stem cells that did the healing or just the general irritation of the area that reminds the body that it might want to reexamine healing that specific area. I believe the French were injecting irritants in the 90s (forgot what chemical it was). Because PRP is injecting something sourced from your own body it can skip many regularity steps that would be required by some other chemical. I don’t know how much of PRP is simply a low regulation irritant and how much of it is stem cells, my guess it’s more the former than the latter.
Edit; Googling it now: Prolotherapy which has a long rich history, modern PRP alternatives seem to be salt and or sugar water based. Seems like some studies suggest there isn’t much difference in outcomes between salt water injections and PRP injections.
Addendum; it was one of the most painful surgeries I’ve done, I’m anesthetic resistant and they used basically none off it. An ultrasound was used for guiding the needle. The injury location was in the back of the knee and they wanted to be careful they didn’t inject into a nerve. When asked how would they know if they hit a nerve, they responded “your screams of pain will go up an octave”. They did hit a nerve and I let them know it.