Therapies for Cartilage injuries of Women in Sports: the Way to Citius, Altius, and Fortius

Since the self-repair capability of articular cartilage is very limited, the degeneration of cartilage function is inevitable once injured, preventing women in sports from pursuing a faster, higher, and stronger level, and even forcing them to terminate their training. To restore cartilage function, various methods have been applied by physicians. These include medical treatment, physical therapy, microfracture, osteoarticularautograft transfer, andautologous chondrocyteimplantation. Though cartilage regeneration by current methods is successful to some extent, the limitations, such as unsatisfactory effectiveness and long-term outcome, are no longer ignored. New methods for cartilage repair are necessary. Cell-based therapy, especially that using stem cells, is drawing increasing attention. There are some promising results from using bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells as the cell source. Meanwhile, other stem cells, such as embryonic stem cell-derived mesenchymal stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells, are under preliminary study. In this chapter, the cartilage physiology and pathology of women in sports will be discussed. Following current methods for cartilage repair, the strategy andpossibility of applying cell-based therapy with an emphasis on stem cells will be addressed, based on basic research as well as clinical trials.