2023, Vol. 27 ›› Issue (6): 921-927

Application potential of adipose-derived stem cells in female pelvic floor dysfunction diseases

Bai Siqi, Xiao Zhen, Liu Jing   

Abstract: BACKGROUND: The incidence of pelvic floor dysfunctions is increasing year by year, and the existing treatment methods have disadvantages in curative effect. Stem cell therapy has a great potential in the treatment of many diseases. As seed cells for stem cell therapy, adipose-derived stem cells have become one of the alternative cell types with the unique advantages of rich sources, convenient acquisition, high proliferative activity, multi-directional differentiation, low immunogenicity, easy culture in vitro and avoiding many ethical problems.  
OBJECTIVE: To discuss the application potential of adipose-derived stem cells in female pelvic floor disorders, especially urinary incontinence and fecal incontinence according to the characteristics, advantages and existing research of adipose-derived stem cells.
METHODS:   The 363 related articles were searched on CNKI, Wanfang database, VIP database and PubMed database with “stem cells, adipose-derived stem cells, pelvic floor dysfunction diseases, stress urinary incontinence, anal incontinence” as the search terms. Through screening and sorting, the articles unrelated to the research contents, repetitive studies and prematurely published articles were excluded, and 55 articles were finally retained for review.  
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Adipose-derived stem cells are expected to provide a new breakthrough for the treatment of pelvic floor disorders according to their convenient access, rapid self-renewal, low immunogenicity, high proliferation rate, and the potential of multi-lineage differentiation. However, there are still some problems to be solved in the process of clinical transformation, such as the lack of standardized procedures and norms for stem cell acquisition, culture, transplantation and post-transplantation monitoring as well as the existing research due to small sample size, short follow-up time and other problems. Adipose-derived stem cells in the future treatment of pelvic floor dysfunctions will have both opportunities and challenges.
Key words: stem cell, adipose-derived stem cell, pelvic floor dysfunction disease, stress urinary incontinence, anal incontinence, review