Listen: BME Professor Discusses Musculoskeletal Treatment on BBC Health Check Podcast
Listen Below: On June 12, 2019, Professor Mark Grinstaff (BME, Chemistry, MSE, MED) was interviewed on the BBC’s Health Check Podcast.
The interview begins at 19:39
Segment Summary: When women are pregnant they release more of a hormone called relaxin. This hormone peaks in the first and third trimester; helping an embryo successfully implant in the uterus, and also helping to relax the ligaments in the pelvis to aid childbirth. An orthopaedic surgeon in the US noticed that when his patients had stiff, frozen elbow, they eased during and after pregnancy and he wondered whether this was due to their increased levels of relaxin.
A team then conducted a study in rats to see whether injections of relaxin could help with frozen shoulder, a condition where connective tissues around the joint become thickened and stiff. It can cause a lot of pain and make it very hard to move. Mark Grinstaff, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Chemistry, Materials and Medicine at Boston University in the US, tells Claudia that the injections seemed to work in rats, and that the use of relaxin could be a very promising treatment for other musculoskeletal diseases. The results have just been published in the journal PNAS.