If there is a lesson humans have learned over the years, it’s that nothing can really keep us in one place for long. Regardless of how challenging the circumstances get, we always somehow find a way to pass through them, and notably enough, we do so in a productive manner. You see, by picking bits and pieces from different situations, we contribute rather significantly towards our knowledge pool. We then use the said knowledge to scale up on a personal level, thus better equipping ourselves for dealing with every further test. Now, while each little piece of information here can potentially go on to play a huge role, we can easily observe some strong disparity in their overall importance. For instance, the things we have learned from a creation like technology will always have a relatively higher stature in our lives. This is the case because of technology’s generational capabilities and how they have helped us achieve groundbreaking results around every corner. In fact, the creation’s far-reaching impact has literally transformed the world’s identity, and no sphere does a better job of showing it than our medical sector. Even after scaling up beyond all known boundaries, the global healthcare sector continues to flourish. The latest example to substantiate its progressive stance was delivered to us by the University of Connecticut.
The researching team at University of Connecticut has successfully developed a piezoelectric scaffold, which is essentially designed to facilitate cartilage regeneration in joints. Adding another dimension to years of research on cartilage regeneration, the scaffold uses electricity for creating an environment that invites new cells to come and form a new bunch within the affected area, thus bolstering the recovery process. So far, most of the methods enlisted in this context have faced a one common roadblock. These methods have failed to make the newly-formed cartilage act native, therefore leading to ruptures under stress situations. Piezoelectricity take, however, offers a more promising avenue. As it mirrors the process naturally occurring in a person’s body, the method can very well bring that much-needed sustainability to the whole discipline.
Piezoelectricity is a phenomenon that also exists in the human body,” said Yang Liu, a developer of the new technology. “Bone, cartilage, collagen, DNA and various proteins have a piezoelectric response. Our approach to healing cartilage is highly clinically translational, and we will look into the related healing mechanism.”
In its first practical execution, the researchers have tested the scaffold on rabbits, and according to certain reports, what they saw was highly encouraging.
