Conditions

Every condition covered on this site, grouped by body system, each carrying the evidence grade its page argues for. The grade describes the published human evidence for cell therapy in that condition — not how heavily it is marketed, and the two frequently point in opposite directions.

How to read this list

The grade after each condition is the same one that page carries, and it is assigned from what a PubMed search actually returned rather than from search demand.

Higher-level human evidence means randomised controlled trials, meta-analyses or a phase III programme. Early human evidence means small or unreplicated human studies. Preclinical evidence means laboratory and animal work, before human use. Insufficient evidence means nothing reliable in humans exists for that condition.

Seven of these pages carry that last grade. They exist because someone searching for those treatments deserves an answer rather than a sales page — what the evidence levels mean sets out the full scheme.

Joints, bone and soft tissue

• Osteoarthritis — Higher-level human evidence. The parent condition: where regenerative approaches have most evidence and where they do not.
• Knee Osteoarthritis — Higher-level human evidence. The best-evidenced application, with phase III trials and meta-analyses behind it.
• Hip Osteoarthritis — Early human evidence. Less studied than the knee, and the difference matters.
• Ankle Osteoarthritis — Early human evidence. A smaller literature than the knee, focused mostly on the talar cartilage surface.
• Cartilage Damage — Early human evidence. Symptom improvement and structural repair are different endpoints and are measured differently.
• Meniscus Tear — Early human evidence. One controlled injection trial after meniscectomy, and what it did and did not show.
• Ligament Injuries — Preclinical evidence. Scaffold and laboratory work dominates. Human ligament data is scarce.
• Tendon Injury — Preclinical evidence. Mostly laboratory and animal work, with human evidence still thin.
• Rotator Cuff Injury — Early human evidence. Includes a randomised trial that did not favour the injection, which is worth knowing.
• Sports Injuries — Early human evidence. Soft-tissue knee injury has been reviewed systematically; most of it remains small and early.
• Degenerative Disc Disease — Early human evidence. What the disc trials actually measured, and over what follow-up.

Autoimmune and inflammatory

• Autoimmune Conditions — Early human evidence. The hub for the autoimmune pages, and where the immunomodulation argument is set out.
• Rheumatoid Arthritis — Early human evidence. An autoimmune target where MSC immunomodulation is under study.
• Systemic Lupus Erythematosus — Early human evidence. A placebo-controlled trial exists. Its result is not the one the marketing implies.
• Crohn’s Disease — Conflicting phase III findings. Perianal fistula trials have conflicting results; read the updated page and EMA withdrawal notice.
• Ulcerative Colitis — Early human evidence. Studied under inflammatory bowel disease as a whole, with weaker evidence of its own.
• Psoriasis — Insufficient evidence. Almost everything cited for psoriasis was actually run in atopic dermatitis.
• Multiple Sclerosis — Early human evidence. The evidence people cite is for a hospital transplant procedure, not for a clinic infusion.

Neurological

• Parkinson’s Disease — Early human evidence. A 2025 randomised trial of allogeneic marrow MSCs, and the fetal-tissue history behind it.
• Alzheimer’s Disease and Dementia — Early human evidence. One randomised trial in mild disease. Read what it measured before reading the headline.
• Cognitive Decline — Insufficient evidence. Cognition has been a secondary endpoint in other diseases, and rarely the target itself.
• Ischaemic Stroke — Early human evidence. Studied intravenously, with results that need reading carefully.
• Spinal Cord Injury — Early human evidence. A 2023 systematic review exists. It is not the same as a treatment that works.
• Nerve Damage and Neuropathy — Early human evidence. Diabetic peripheral neuropathy carries most of the human data here.
• Post-Viral Recovery and Long COVID — Insufficient evidence. Severe acute COVID was trialled heavily. Long COVID was not, and the two get conflated.

Heart, circulation and lungs

• Ischaemic Heart Disease — Early human evidence. Two decades of cardiac cell trials, and why enthusiasm has cooled rather than grown.
• Recovery After a Heart Attack — Higher-level human evidence. Among the most-trialled applications in the field, with modest and contested effects.
• Peripheral Vascular Disease — Early human evidence. Critical limb ischaemia, where the endpoint is amputation rather than a pain score.
• COPD — Early human evidence. A placebo-controlled trial reported no lung-function benefit. That is the headline finding.
• Chronic Lung Conditions — Early human evidence. Acute lung injury has been trialled seriously; chronic lung disease much less so.
• Pulmonary Fibrosis — Preclinical evidence. The systematic reviews people quote for this are reviews of animal models.

Metabolic, wounds and tissue repair

• Type 2 Diabetes — Early human evidence. A 2024 meta-analysis exists and its limitations are substantial.
• Diabetic Foot Ulcer — Early human evidence. One of the few areas with a randomised controlled trial behind it.
• Metabolic Syndrome — Insufficient evidence. Searched directly, this returns laboratory work on how metabolic disease damages cells.
• Burn Recovery — Early human evidence. Cultured skin grafting is long established. Injected cells for burns are not the same thing.
• Scar Tissue and Wound Repair — Early human evidence. Chronic wounds have real data. Cosmetic scar improvement has much less.
• Hormonal Imbalance and Ovarian Insufficiency — Early human evidence. Primary ovarian insufficiency is the only hormonal indication with human trials behind it.
• Hair Thinning and Hair Loss — Early human evidence. Most of what is sold as stem cell hair treatment rests on platelet-rich plasma evidence.

Pain and fatigue

• Fibromyalgia and Chronic Pain — Insufficient evidence. The trials quoted for fibromyalgia were run in back pain and knee arthritis.
• Chronic Fatigue Syndrome — Insufficient evidence. No controlled trial of cell therapy in ME/CFS exists to describe.

Ageing and aesthetic

• Biological Age Reversal — Insufficient evidence. Frailty has been trialled. Age reversal has never been an endpoint in any of them.
• Telomeres and Longevity — Insufficient evidence. Telomere length moves with diet and sleep in trials. No cell therapy trial has measured it.
• Cosmetic Rejuvenation — Early human evidence. Fat grafting is a real surgical procedure with randomised data, and it is not an infusion.

Examples to read closely

Perianal fistula in Crohn’s disease illustrates why confirmatory trials matter: earlier positive results were not confirmed in ADMIRE-CD II, and darvadstrocel was subsequently withdrawn from the EU market.

Knee osteoarthritis has multiple randomised trials and a 2025 meta-analysis behind it.

Recovery after a heart attack has been trialled more heavily than almost anything in the field, with effects that have grown smaller as the trials have grown better.

Where it is weakest

Biological age reversal, telomere lengthening, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, metabolic syndrome, cognitive decline and psoriasis have no controlled human trial evidence for cell therapy.

Several of them are among the most heavily advertised indications in the sector. That is not a coincidence: conditions that fluctuate naturally, respond to attention, and have no objective endpoint are the easiest to appear to treat.

The limits of current evidence covers the pattern across the whole field.

If your condition is not listed

It usually means a literature search returned nothing specific enough to write about honestly, and a page was not created rather than padded out.

That is a deliberate choice. A page for every searchable condition would rank better and inform worse.

Contact if you want records reviewed anyway — the answer may still be that nothing here applies to you.

Frequently asked questions

Requesting a medical evaluation

Nothing on this page establishes whether any treatment is appropriate for you. That needs your history, your imaging and your current medications read by a clinician. If you would like that review, send your records and we will tell you honestly whether there is anything worth discussing — including when the answer is no.

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This page is general information, not medical advice, and does not create a doctor–patient relationship. Regenerative treatments discussed here are in most cases investigational. Discuss any treatment with a clinician who knows your history.