GOOD news for injured athletes. Damaged knee ligaments heal better if patched with a scaffold made from pig’s intestine.
Tearing the medial collateral ligament, or MCL, is one of the most common sporting injuries. The ligament tends to heal by itself, so doctors don’t usually resort to surgery. But afterwards it can be weaker and prone to further injury.
So Volker Musahl and his postdoc Savio L-Y Woo at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania tried patching up MCL injuries in rabbits with the material derived from pig gut. The patched ligaments were stronger than those left to heal by…
