Breakthrough research could speed up the recovery of injured athletes.
21 Apr 2009
A tendon can be one of the most common and frustrating injuries for an athlete - often forcing them to stay away from the sports field for up to eight weeks
Breakthrough research could speed up the recovery of injured athletes.
21 Apr 2009
A tendon can be one of the most common and frustrating injuries for an athlete - often forcing them to stay away from the sports field for up to eight weeks.
But now the pioneering research of a University of Manchester student could be about to speed up the recovery process.
Lucy Bosworth, from the University's School of Materials, has developed a way of spinning biodegradable nanofibres into a 'fabric' that could be used in the body as an artificial tendon.
The artificial tendon can be surgically grafted onto the site of an injury, where it encourages the injured tendon to grow and repair, before safely degrading.
And that, researchers believe, would dramatically decrease the time needed for a tendon to heal.
Currently patients face the choice of having a tendon from another part of the body surgically grafted onto the injury site or completely resting the injured area for a significant period of time.
Grafting a tendon from another part of the body creates a second site in the body that needs to heal. And the alternative of enforced rest for a number of weeks can be unpopular, especially for those who are committed to their sport.
Lucy says that using the artificial tendon would take away the need to operate on a second site in the body, which speeds up the recovery time.
And she believes the alternative approach would be of particular interest to athletes - amateur and professional - who are keen to speed up the time it takes for tendon injuries to heal.
Lucy is about to start the pre-clinical stage of her artificial tendon research. And she says they could be used in hospitals in less than three years.
"Tendons have a poor healing response," said Lucy, who is part of the School's Biomaterials Group. "If you damage them they often don't heal back to their original strength, you do get a lot of scar tissue and you can have on