Arthritis sufferers may soon find relief from an unlikely source: glass. Researchers at the University of Missouri-Rolla are developing special glasses that could be used to repair bone and microscopic glass spheres that could be injected into arthritic joints.
"Imagine using a caulking gun to repair the cracks in your bathroom. Now think of injecting a non-harmful but similar substance into a crushed vertebrae to fill in the space and cracks," says Dr. Delbert Day, Curators' Professor emeritus of ceramic engineering at UMR.
By mixing crushed glass particles with a polymer, Day is developing a substance that could be used to repair broken or diseased bone. The mixture would be injected into the area of a crushed vertebrae or other damaged bone. The mixture then fills the cracks, glueing the broken pieces back together. Once this mixture hardens, it turns into a bonelike substance, bonding itself to the original bone, Day says.
Those who struggle with rheumatoid arthritis might find inspiration in what glass can do for treating their ailment. Day and other UMR researchers are perfecting biodegradable glass spheres that will be used to irradiate arthritis joints. Small radioactive glass spheres, about one-fifth to one-tenth the diameter of a human hair, can be injected into the diseased joint. Once the radiation is delivered, the spheres gradually react with the body fluids and eventually disappear from the body, thus creating a safe way to expose a patient to radiation.
"The glass beads confine all of the radioactivity to the diseased joint," says Day.
According to Day, the development of biodegradable glass beads is advancing rapidly. "What we investigate and see in the laboratory, compared to what has been seen in experiments on animals, is encouraging."
Day says similar procedures can be used to treat other ailments. Instead of using a solid glass sphere, a hollow sphere or shell filled with a drug and injected into the body, or spread as a cream onto the skin and gradually released into the body's system, could be used, Day says. This type of treatment releases the drug in a more uniform manner and targets the infection or diseased area. UMR has licensed this technology to a company that intends to use the drug-filled shells to treat skin disorders such as psoriasis and chronic eczema, says Day.
UMR was recently issued two U.S. patents for the research.
Day also is the co-inventor of special radioactive glass microspheres, TheraSphere, which are FDA-approved and being used commercially at seven sites in the United States to treat patients with liver cancer. He holds more than 42 patents.
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