Inflammation can cause all sorts of havoc in your body. Now, a study is saying that inflammation affects bone healing. This could explain why it takes so long to heal after a broken bone as you get older.
Does Inflammation Affect Bone Healing?
The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
It’s well known that your body gets more easily inflamed as you get older due to wear and tear. Inflammation caused by the immune system thinking something is attacking you. It’s supposed to be part of the healing process.
This study looked at how the age-driven increase in immune signals ruins the ability of stems to multiply. Stems cells are crucial to bone repair and creating new bone.
The team tried and successfully restored the skeletal stem cell number and function in aging mice by using the anti-inflammatory part of aspirin.
Their results prove that the decrease in the number and function of the skeletal stem cells that enable bones to heal is due to inflammation, not age.
This could mean that it would be better to start taking anti-inflammatory drugs weeks before any orthopedic surgeries, instead of waiting until after a bone breaks. Doing this could result in an average healing speed.
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