Baseball et cellules souches...

Deux univers qui à première vue ont bien de choses en commun. Le lanceur Christopher John Nitkowski se prête à une expérimentation dans le but de prolonger sa carrière. Le traitement implique une injection de ses propres cellules souches. Le lanceur de 37 ans est prêt à assumer tous les risques dans l'espoir de lancer pour une dernière saison...

 "In the middle of the 2011 baseball season Nitkowski announced in a first-person article for Sports Illustrated that he would try a comeback. After his brief major league appearance in 2005, he pitched subsequent years for one team in Japan and three in South Korea.

This time, he wrote, he would agree to a risky medical experiment that would involve injecting his own stem cells into his injured pitching shoulder, which he hurt in an initial comeback attempt last spring.

Nitkowski was following the path of 37-year-old Bartolo Colon, who in late 2010 went through the same procedure. Colon wound up restored to health and pitched credibly for the New York Yankees in 2011.%% Nitkowski and the physician, Dr. Joseph Purita, agreed to CNN's request to follow the procedure and report on the outcome, no matter what that turned out to be.

 In late August, Nitkowski went to Purita's Florida office and watched as some of his own stem cells were extracted from fatty tissue around his waist. The stem cells were then spun in a centrifuge and emerged as something called platelet rich plasma (PRP), which athletes have been using in recent years to restore their health.

 Nitkowski returned several weeks later for a follow-up PRP injection. No human growth hormones, which are a banned substance in major league baseball, were used.

Both Nitkowski and Purita told CNN they were well aware of the risks. "We really don't have a good uniform idea of what constitutes platelet rich plasma," Purita told CNN. "I mean, what is it? You could ask 10 doctors and they're going to give you 10 different answers. We really need to get together and form an idea as to what it is."

One doctor contacted by CNN says the whole process is essentially worthless. "There are many, many misstatements, direct inaccuracies and errors in the way that growth factors and stem cells are portrayed," Dr. George Daley, president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, said after reading an informational packet written by Purita, available to patients on his website. "If it were subjected to a critical analysis by experts in the field, it would be dismissed as unfortunately superficial and inaccurate."

http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/21/health/stem-cells-pitcher/index.html?hpt=hp_c1