Platelet‐rich plasma—Where do we stand today? A critical narrative review and analysis

Abstract

“Sometimes you have to travel a long way to find what is near.” This quote by Paulo Coelho stands true for platelet‐rich plasma (PRP) as we know of it today. Large strides have been made to understand this “youth” in blood, but there still seems a long way to go in our understanding of it. Despite advances, clarity in its preparation, biology, and the properties of the final product still remains elusive. The concepts of an ideal number or concentration of platelets in the final enriched plasma, best devices to prepare PRP, an ideal hardware, standard parameters for its preparation, the need for its activation or buffering of the final preparation or whether anticoagulants should be used or not, have evolved, since it was first described. The authors present an analysis of PRP present day status and its usefulness in field of medicine with a review of published literature from “Medline” (via “PubMed”), “Cochrane,” the Virtual Health Library, and Google Scholar related to PRP, its biology, types, and classifications, preparation, and use.

Impact of Different Platelet Concentrates Application on Bone Regeneration. An Experimental Study

“…It is safe, biocompatible, resorbed by the body within a few days after initiating local regeneration, and no risk of immunologic reactions as no bovine thrombin is used for activation. (31) In addition, this system prepares fibrin membrane that may be used as an autologous membrane for GTR. (32) In the fields of skin wound healing, repair of damaged tendon and cartilage, satisfactory results have been obtained.…”

Approaches to Improve Endometrial Receptivity in Case of Repeated Implantation Failures

“…It is considered an inexpensive means of delivering high concentrations of growth factors since activated platelets release, via their α-granules, high concentrations of VEGF, TGFβ and PDGF (Lang et al, 2017;Baba et al, 2019). As a result PRP is considered effective as a regeneration and anti-inflammatory agent (Vitagliano et al, 2019;Arora and Arora, 2020). Local administration of PRP has been used in several medical fields like orthopedics, otolaryngology and ophthalmology.…”

Platelets in Wound Healing: What Happens in Space?

“…Last, platelets aid the remodeling of the extracellular matrix secreting Matrix Metallo-Proteinases (MMPs) and releasing the hydrolases stored in their lysosomes. Our increasing understanding of the role of platelet in wound healing and tissue regeneration resulted in the development of autologous Platelet-Rich Plasma (PRP) gels, which are largely utilized in a number of clinical settings, from healing of skin wounds and diabetic ulcers to regeneration of tendons and ligaments, from eye lesions to bone loss ( Arora and Arora, 2021 ).…”

“…Wound healing might represent one of the major problems onboard, and this raises the need to promote studies to define adequate countermeasures. As mentioned above, a great amount of data demonstrate the improvement of tissue repair and wound healing upon PRP application ( Arora and Arora, 2021 ). These outcomes together with the feasibility to obtain PRP (once prepared from a few milliliters of autologous blood, it can be stored frozen for many months onboard) indicate that PRP might become a new challenge in the field of tissue healing also in space.…”