JointVibes: by Dr Markandaiya Acharya

A 58-year-old schoolteacher. Let us call her Sunita. She is not a real patient of mine, but you will recognise her. Her right knee has been hurting for three years. First it was only the stairs. Then it was getting up from the floor after puja. Now she plans her whole day around how far she has to walk. One evening her nephew sends her a video. A clinic is offering "stem cell injections" that claim to regrow knee cartilage. No surgery. No hospital stay. One sitting. She watches it four times. Then she asks the question I hear in my clinic almost every week: "Doctor, is it safe? And will it save me from a knee replacement?" Those are two different questions. A recent systematic review answers the first one fairly well. The second one is still open. Both deserve an honest answer. The problem: a knee that keeps shrinking your life Knee osteoarthritis is the gradual wearing of the smooth cartilage that cushions the joint. As it thins, the knee becomes painful, stiff and...

If you've spent any time around an orthopedic clinic, a sports medicine forum, or a wellness ad lately, you've probably heard the pitch: platelet-rich plasma (PRP), stem cells, and exosomes are being sold as everything from a way to dodge knee replacement to a full-on cartilage regrow button. At the same time, skeptics dismiss the whole field as expensive saline with good marketing. Neither extreme lines up with what the actual 2025-2026 research shows. A wave of new meta-analyses, a contentious Lancet review, and a fresh round of FDA warning letters have all landed in the past year, and together they paint a more interesting - and more useful - picture. Here is what the current evidence actually says about the most common orthobiologics myths. What Exactly Are Orthobiologics? Orthobiologics is the umbrella term for substances derived from a patient's own body - blood, bone marrow, or fat tissue - that are processed and re-injected to try to calm inflammation and suppo...