Cambridge scientists to investigate role of cholesterol drugs in improving hip replacement surgery
Researchers in Cambridge are to investigate how common cholesterol-lowering drugs can play a part in improving hip replacement surgery.
A team at the University of Cambridge's Orthopaedic Research Unit plan to test the effectiveness of common cholesterol-lowering drugs in stimulating bone growth. If the drugs, called statins, are proven to produce bone growth around hip implants they could have a radical effect on improving hip replacement surgery.
The team has been awarded a two-year grant of £83,200 from the Arthritis Research Campaign (arc) to carry out the laboratory-based work.
The role of statins in increasing bone growth is already being experimentally investigated as a potential treatment for the brittle bone disease, osteoporosis. But now the director of the orthopaedic research unit, Neil Rushton, aims to establish whether the drugs could be used to specifically stimulate bone growth around implanted hip joints – to make surgery more successful.
Around 50,000 hip replacements are carried out in the UK every year mainly because of osteoarthritis. Many of these will have to be replaced after some years and this is known as revision surgery. This is less successful than the original operation, because bone has been lost from around the first implant, and something has to be packed in around the new implant to fill the defects in the bone.
The best option is to fill the defects in the patient's own bone taken from other sites (autograft) but there is a limited amount of this bone, and the procedure can be extremely painful.
“A primary goal of orthopaedic research is to develop a bone substitute that perform as well as autograft, and many groups have tried using growth factors applied to implants to enhance bone formation,” explained Dr Susan Clarke, who will carry out the research.
“Our project will ass the ability of a statin called simvastatin to enhance new bone formation around an implant. We will investigate the amount of new bone formation and the mechanical stability of the bone/implant interface. If it works it could potentially be used to improve the success of revision surgery.”
The Arthritis Research Campaign is the fourth biggest medical research charity in the UK, and in the past 12 months raised more than £26m from public donations to fund its extensive research programme. Cambridge is a leading centre of arc-funded research.
