Prolotherapy?

[unixronin]

From the Mayo Clinic:

Prolotherapy involves injecting painful ligaments and tendons with sugar solutions that are intended to stimulate production of connective tissue.  A typical course of treatment is six to 10 sessions, sometimes with multiple injections at each session.

[...]

A 2007 review of five well-designed studies involving 366 participants concluded that prolotherapy alone was ineffective in treating chronic low back pain.  However, when combined with other treatments — such as spinal manipulation and exercise — prolotherapy may improve chronic low back pain.

The question I have to ask here is, if prolotherapy "may improve chronic low back pain", but only when combined with "other treatments such as spinal manipulation and exercise" which are known to improve lower back pain, does prolotherapy actually yield any improvement not attributable to the other, known effective, therapies it's being combined with?  In the absence of any stated finding of synergism, this seems a bit like saying "Painting one's toenails blue may be effective against bronchitis, when combined with antibiotics."  The article appears to damn prolotherapy with faint praise.

Comments

[98.livejournal.com]

Good question.

I have only heard of prolotherapy because a friend with Ehlers-Danlos (http://www.ednf.org/abouteds/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12&Itemid=30) gets it to counter the hyper-elasticity of her ligaments by the resulting scar tissue formation.

In that case it seems a reasonable thing to try but I do not know the track record.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting comment, since the prolotherapy article doesn't mention anything about scar tissue formation. Useful to know, as that's a good reason I'd never want to consider it (since many of my problems stem from having too much scar tissue already).

[98.livejournal.com]

I am not an M.D. and I haven't read the article except for your snippet but "stimulate production of connective tissue" is probably technically correct and yet misleading. As explained to me by health care folks the injection is basically an irritant and the body's response is to form scar tissue.