ELECTRICAL STIMULATION ENHANCES MIGRATION AND INVASION OF BONE MARROW STEM CELLS: IMPLICATIONS FOR FRACTURE HEALING

Introduction Nonunions pose complications in fracture management that can be treated using electrical stimulation (ES). Bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMMSCs) are essential in fracture healing, although the effects of different clinical ES waveforms available in clinical practice on BMMSCs cellular activities is unknown. Materials and Methods We compared Direct Current (DC), Capacitive Coupling (CC), Pulsed Electromagnetic wave (PEMF) and Degenerate Wave (DW) by stimulating human-BMMSCs for 5 days for 3 hours a day. Cytotoxicity, cell proliferation, cell-kinetics and cell apoptosis were evaluated after ES. Migration and invasion were assessed using fluorescence microscopy and affected gene and protein expression were quantified. Results DW had the greatest proliferative and least apoptotic and cytotoxic effects compared to other waveforms and unstimulated cells after 5 days of ES (p Conclusion The ES waveform is vital in influencing BMMSCs cellular activities. Migration and invasion were increased by ES which suggests that the recruitment of BMMSCs to the healing site during a fracture could be increased by ES.