Scientists from the University of Pittsburgh have developed a new surgical approach to treating fractures that don’t usually heal, which doesn’t require a bone implant. The research was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Young children under the age of two can naturally heal damage to the bones that make up the top of the skull, but this ability is lost in adults.
“In infants, the bones of the calvarium are not fully fused, so the sutures containing stem cells are still open,” the scientists wrote.
In the new study, the scientists used a device similar to an orthodontic wire used to straighten teeth to gently stretch the bones of the skull along the seams. This activates skeletal stem cells found in the sutures of the skull. In adult mice, this method allowed the repair of skull lesions that would otherwise not heal on their own.
The scientists found that the number of stem cells in the animals’ stitches quadrupled. The method was effective in two-month-old mice with a mature skeleton – which is roughly the same as puberty in humans. But it didn’t work in 10-month-old or middle-aged rodents due to insufficient stem cells in the skull sutures.
The study’s authors are now examining how their results could be used to treat humans, and are also looking for ways to adapt the method to treat adults.