Potential therapeutic agents in chronic and progressive tendinopathy
This paper has explored pathological mechanisms that are implicated in tendinopathy. By understanding better the pathology responsible for chronic progressive tendinopathy, this gives us the potential to rationally assess therapies that may be of benefit.
Chronic tendinopathy should be regarded as a process of degradation which appears to involve many aspects of the chronic injury–repair response, in common with other musculoskeletal rheumatological disorders. This degradation process, with characteristic features of neovessel formation, neoinnervation and synovitis, provides us with potential targets to modify the degradation process in a positive way.
This section of the paper describes the potential for ‘anti-inflammatory’ and other strategies to beneficially modulate both the chronic tendinopathy degradation and progressive tendinopathy process.