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Tissue Injury In Horses

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Horses that are used for professional showing or athletic competitions are inclined to receive an injury involving tendons or ligaments, which can be career or life ending depending on the severity. The injured soft tissue usually has a poor blood supply so they are prone to healing with scar tissue. This makes the healed area less elastic and decreases the function of the tendon or ligament, and re-injury to the soft tissue increases. Another issue associated with soft tissue injuries is the inflammation of a tendon called tendonitis that can be seen in 43% of horses returning to work (Alves AG, Stewart AA, et al, 2011). Because of these issues regenerative therapy has been considered a more effective way to stimulate healing for orthopedic injuries. …show more content…

The focus of regenerative medicine is to the combine effects of a cell source, scaffold support, and anabolic stimulus to enable healing to the damaged tissue. One of the options for a cell source would be tenocytes; however, this would leave a lesion at the donor site from a biopsy, which cannot be done to a horse’s flexor tendon without additional consequences. Also, cells derived from different tendons show different characteristics compromising their effectiveness. Another option for differentiated fibroblasts includes dermal and ligament fibroblasts, but they have different cell characteristics that may not be useful in tendon repair. Therefore, stem cells are being seen as the greatest option for soft tissue repairing and healing (Herthel

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