Tennis elbow not relieved by PRP injections: Cochrane

Moderate-certainty evidence suggests the therapy is no better than placebo, reviewers say

Autologous blood injections and platelet‐rich plasma injections probably have little or no effect on tennis elbow, a Cochrane review concludes.

The Australian-led review of 32 studies with more than 2300 participants has found the treatments are associated with only a 1.6% improvement in pain.

Pooled data from eight trials showed that, three months after intervention, mean pain scores on a 10-point scale (where zero was best) was 3.7 points with placebo and 0.16 points better with autologous blood or platelet‐rich plasma (PRP) injection, a non-significant improvement.

On a 100-point scale to measure function (where zero was best), treatment was associated with an improvement of two points over placebo (27.5 points), which was also not statistically significant.