Pixie dust

[leahbee]

My sister will have an operation on her leg.She has had osteomiylitis. Pixie dust will be used during the operation to heal the bone. Has anyone had any experience of this.She has had several procedures on the leg before, non of which has been successful.

[Richard1966]

Took the following from an american website after a bit of web searching. You may have already seen this sounds fascinating. No experience of it myself.

A key to the research dedicated to regrowing fingers and other body parts is a powder, nicknamed "pixie dust" by some of the people at Brooke. It's made from tissue extracted from pigs.
The pixie dust powder itself doesn't regrow the missing tissue, it tricks the patient's body into doing that itself. All bodies have stem cells. As we are developing in our mothers' wombs, those stem cells grow our fingers, toes, organs -- essentially our whole body. The stem cells stop doing that around birth, but they don't go away. The researchers believe the "pixie dust" can put those stem cells back to work growing new body parts.


The powder forms a microscopic "scaffold" that attracts stem cells and convinces them to grow into the tissue that used to be there. "If it is next to the skin, it will start making skin. If it's next to a tendon, it will start making a tendon, and so that's the hope, at least in this particular project, that we can grow a finger," Wolf said.

[buildersmate]

Perhaps the name was originally 'pigsy dust', but it got misheard somewhere along the line.

[leahbee]

Thank you so much for your information. I am new to computing so don't really know how to research the web. I found this site by accident and I am so glad that I did. My sister has now had the operation but was told that it will be at least 12 weeks before they will know if the pixie dust is working. IHer own GP had to agree to contribute �5000 towards the treatment. The thigh bone is a different thing to a finger so if it does work the benefits could be enormous for all manner of medical problems.

[Richard1966]

Hope it works out.

Take care