Nutritional research may be useful in treating tendon injuries
Nutrition Volume 32, Issue 6, June 2016, Pages 617–619 Luke Curtis
Highlights
• Tendon injuries cause a great deal of pain, disability, medical costs, and suffering.
• Tendon injuries are difficult to treat.
• Relatively little is known about tendon biology compared with muscle or bone biology.
• Limited research suggests nutritional treatments may be useful for tendon healing.
• Amino acids, vitamins D and C, manganese, copper, and zinc may be useful for tendon healing.
Tendon injures cause a great deal of disability and pain, and increase medical costs. However, relatively little is known about tendon biology and healing. Many tendon-related surgical procedures are not very successful and leave the patient with essentially a chronic injury. New therapeutic approaches for tendon injury are needed.
Preliminary evidence suggests that various nutrients such as proteins, amino acids (leucine, arginine, glutamine), vitamins C and D, manganese, copper, zinc, and phytochemicals may be useful in improving tendon growth and healing. More research on nutrition and tendon health is needed. Because many nutrients are required for tendon health, nutritional interventions involving multiple nutrients may be more effective than single-nutrient strategies. In the future, ideal treatment regimens for tendon injuries may include a multifaceted “bundle” of nutrition, drugs, biologic products, extracellular matrix therapies, exercise/physical therapy, and possibly surgery.