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Local doctor to treat Hondurans for chronic pain By BILL KETTLER Dr. Carl Osborn will see plenty of unfamiliar faces during the next two weeks. The Ashland osteopath travels to Honduras today to join about 30 doctors and nurses helping some of the poorest people in Latin America. Osborn will treat people suffering from chronic joint pain, using a relatively obscure technique well-suited to the low-tech environment of a developing country. Osborn specializes in prolotherapy, a nonsurgical technique that relieves pain in damaged ligaments and tendons. Physicians inject a sugar-water solution into damaged tissues where they attach to the bone. The injections are thought to cause the adjacent tissues to deposit collagen, a substance that strengthens the affected area. Osborn said prolotherapy is an especially useful treatment for the people he will see because they don't have the money to pay for expensive drugs that are available in the United States. "Honduras is one of the poorest countries in Central America," he said. "They still haven't recovered from the effects of Hurricane Mitch several years ago." Prolotherapy's history dates at least to the 1930s, when some physicians began injecting sugar solutions into injured joints. Osborn said prolotherapy hasn't become a mainstream treatment because nobody wants to pay for the research into an area with no financial payback. "You can't patent this technique. Pharmaceutical firms have no interest in proving it works." Without scientific research, prolotherapy remains an alternative therapy instead of a mainstream technique, Osborn said. "Medicine is very conservative and doesn't adapt or change readily. In our modern medical world, if you don't have studies to prove the effectiveness of a treatment, it's difficult to get it into the mainstream teaching of medicine." Osborn, who came to Southern Oregon last year from Colorado, will be making his third journey to Honduras. The annual medical mission is organized by the George S. Hackett Foundation, a nonprofit organization named for a physician who pioneered prolotherapy in the United States. Hackett coined prolotherapy from "proliferation" and "therapy" because the injections seemed to cause the joint tissue to grow or proliferate. Osborn will be teaching other physicians how to use prolotherapy while he treats Hondurans. Those physicians, in turn, will tell their patients about its advantages when they return home. Osborn hopes the treatment will eventually gain mainstream acceptance. "It's a process, and it will take time," he said. "Prolotherapy has been increasing in the mainstream. People are asking their doctors about it, and asking for someone who can do it." Reach reporter Bill Kettler at 776-4492, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.