How well will disk regeneration fit into the realm of treatment options for chronic low-back pain?
The biggest problem with low-back pain is that obvious radiographic evidence of degenerative disk disease may or may not be present in an individual suffering from low-back pain. Even if technologies are developed that can reverse the phenotypic expression of spinal degenerative disease (disk height loss, endplate sclerosis, loss of cellular content, and matrix constituents), this may not result in the subjective improvement of patient reports of back pain, a fact that has frustrated spinal care physicians for decades.
