The Effectiveness of Mesenchymal Stem Cell (MSCs) Therapy Combined with Arthroscopy as Treatment for Knee Osteoarthritis (KOA): A Systematic Review.

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a progressive and chronic disease that can result in the patient's increased pain and loss of function. There might be some potential approaches to improve the recovery with mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs). The efficacy of using MSCs in treatment of OA was found to have a significant impact on the treatment and was focused on improving physical function and psychometric measures of pain. Although various available data and research studies regarding MSCs have shown their potential in clinical use, there is still limited data of MSCs regarding actual long-term safety and efficacy in larger clinical trials. To address these issues and inform future studies, we performed a clinical systematic review of MSC therapy for knee osteoarthritis combined with arthroscopy procedure. Cochrane (2022), EMBASE (2022), MEDLINE (2022) and PubMed (2022) were utilized as research platforms. Using the inclusion criteria, the total viable studies that were used within the systematic review amounts to around 18 studies. Clinically, MSCs treatment on OA have also reported improvements on the target site, such as that of articular cartilage, subchondral bone, and joint-space width. The results were obtained from data results of WOMAC, VAS, KOOS and ICRS, as well as through radiological imaging using MRI. However, there are still limitations that the reviews provide such as heterogeneity complications of MSCs of the studies reviewed, as well as the potential of risk bias assessment during publication. Therefore, future studies will need to address the evaluation of MSCs effect on cartilage regeneration on knee osteoarthritis (OA), improving structural outcomes of the knee, as well as its efficacy during combined treatment methods of arthroscopy.