Inject blood to beat injury

redout

Sounds very interesting indeed. Says Chelsea toyed with it before but were warned off. I think it must remain illegal after reading the article as it said something about getting more oxygen.




Blood jab puts sports stars on fast track to beating injury



Maurice Chittenden



div#related-article-links p a, div#related-article-links p a:visited {color:#06c;}THE next time Andy Murray suffers tennis elbow or Tiger Woods, the golfer, tears a ligament in his knee, help could be close at hand.
Scientists have discovered that injecting athletes with their own blood can speed recovery from a whole range of sporting injuries.

Their next step is to persuade the sporting authorities that the procedure – known as platelet-rich plasma therapy (PRPT) – does not amount to doping because your own blood cannot be counted as a banned substance if it is injected into tissue rather than into the bloodstream.
Two of the Pittsburgh Steelers American football team received the treatment before their team won the Super Bowl earlier this month. About 20 professional football players in America have also undergone the procedure, but it is banned in Britain at present.


PRPT dates back to the 1970s and has previously been used in orthopaedic surgery in hospitals to help mend broken bones.
Sports doctors believe its use is so well tested that it could be deployed as a rapid healing trick for a number of sporting injuries without the need for surgery. The blood is withdrawn with a syringe, then spun in a centrifuge to isolate the body-healing platelets which are then injected into the damaged tissue.

Research has found that athletes who undergo the treatment report functional recovery in half the time expected.
In one study 15 of 20 patients with painful elbow tendinitis – the condition popularly known as tennis elbow – and contemplating surgery were given PRPT; the other five relied on anaesthetic.

Two months later the patients receiving the therapy reported a 60% reduction in pain compared with only 16% for the others.
Bruce Hamilton, former chief medical officer of UK Athletics, who held a conference on its use in Qatar earlier this month, said: “It’s a very exciting area. The early studies are extremely positive and the basic science would certainly support its use, but in the extreme you could see how it could easily be used to regenerate muscle which is not really damaged.”

The World AntiDoping Agency (Wada) and the International Olympic Committee still need to be convinced. Both sent representatives to Qatar.
Chelsea football club has already requested its potential use on England players such as John Terry, Frank Lampard and Joe Cole but was told it could contravene strict controls on substances and illegally enhance performance.

“Blood doping” has long been a problem in professional cycling. If a cyclist takes blood it increases the oxygen in his bloodstream and makes muscles work better. Sports scientists advocating PRPT argue that this is not the case when injecting the blood into damaged tissue.

However, there is still concern that the reinjected platelets will contain insulin-like material which will count as a banned growth substance.
“We manage the annual prohibited list. Our experts have determined that blood-spinning is prohibited in cases where the method used is based on blood-processing leading to release of growth factors,” Wada said.
Its rules will not be relaxed in time to help Murray in his bid to win Wimbledon this year. The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club said: “We follow the advice from Wada.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article5780309.ece

Frisbee

Thats pretty weird...

good read though

godtabh

Didn't Juve and Milan do something like this?

I think Milan Lab has or has a program where they used to take a players blood at the start of a season and use it to boost their performance later on in the season

missingtime

I'm sure someday they'll all be twitching and foaming at the mouth.

anonymous_joe

Read about an American footballer who played in the Super Bowl or one of their silly matches and he'd had his own blood taken out, concentrated and injected into the injured area and it healed faster...

mloc123

<edit>seems its not blood doping..</edit>

iregk

This is something thats been done in cycling for years and infact its what Tyler Hamilton was banned for. Essentially they store blood for about 6 months then coming up to the big races i.e. tour de france they inject it to give a higher cell count. It has a similar effect to that of epdedrine.

Its illegal in cycling and automatically gets you kicked out of a tour and a 2 year ban.

astrofool

iregk wrote: »

This is something thats been done in cycling for years and infact its what Tyler Hamilton was banned for. Essentially they store blood for about 6 months then coming up to the big races i.e. tour de france they inject it to give a higher cell count. It has a similar effect to that of epdedrine.

Its illegal in cycling and automatically gets you kicked out of a tour and a 2 year ban.

It's a slippery slope before every player will have an 'injury' that requires this type of treatment before a big match.

I remember with the GAA furore, they found that the level in asthma in sports people (you know, the fittest, healthiest people in society) was 4 times higher than it was in general society.

PHB

It can apparently be very useful for long term injuries though, so I don't think thats a problem.

As I remember though, there were rumours that Chelsea players were taking it at half time to give them that extra kick onwards, which is fairly dodgy like.