Orthopedics This Week: Eureka… Gold for spine and joint disease?
June 15, 2013
Gold is believed to have an anti-inflammatory effect and has been used for the past 50 years to treat arthritis. Recently, Athrogen, a company based out of Germany has developed a new approach called GOLDIC to use gold for similar purposes. In this technique, patients’ own blood is mixed with gold particles. Upon injecting GOLDIC, this mixture triggers increased generation of certain proteins that decrease inflammation.
Arthrogen completed two studies in support of using GOLDIC. In the first study, 34 patients with knee osteoarthritis underwent four rounds of GOLDIC injections. Patients showed decreased pain, improved functional status, and also significant increase in sports activity three months after treatment.
In a more recent 8 subject pilot study, patients with lumbar (lower spine) disc herniation pain were given a series of four gold injections given at three to seven day intervals. One month after the injections patients reported significant decrease in pain and by the fourth injection some of the patients were essentially symptom free. Therefore, Arthrogen’s goal is promote GOLDIC as a useful tool in orthopedic and trauma surgery. At the Orthohealing center we offer several innovative options to potentially provide relief of spien pain without surgery, including platelet Rich Plasma (PRP) and Bone Marrow Concentration (BMC).