Is PRP Therapy Safe ? What Doctors Want You To Know

womenshealthmag.com · Feb 18, 2026 · Collected from GDELT

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EVERY DAY FOR nearly 15 years, Raynie Canoy woke up in head-to-toe pain that made it hard to function. Her neck, back, and knees ached, and her hips felt so tight that some days she could barely bend over to pick up her 2-year-old daughter. Even after a provider dubbed it fibromyalgia, she found little relief beyond salves like yoga and magnesium baths, which delivered only temporary relief.In February 2025, Canoy was in a car accident that resulted in five herniated discs and made everything worse. At just 30 years old, she was unable to comfortably get dressed, turn her neck, tie her shoes, or sleep. She became increasingly desperate for a fix. “I was like, Where do we go from here?” says Canoy, who lives in Pleasant Garden, North Carolina.After some research, Internet sleuthing, and convos with doctors about treatments like cortisol injections, surgery, and other possible fixes, she landed on platelet-rich plasma therapy (PRP). This regenerative medicine technique involves drawing a patient’s blood, separating out its components in a centrifuge, and injecting a sample dense with healing factors into the injured area. The process aims—and claims—to supercharge the body’s natural recovery processes, whether needed for a strained muscle or a scalp sparse from hair loss.With an injury, the platelet is what “creates a clot and sends out growth factors and a whole host of other chemicals to start this very beautiful and predictable chain of events—the inflammatory cycle itself,” explains Michelle Morse, DPM, a foot and ankle surgeon in Massachusetts. “So the idea [with PRP] is: Can we make that very potent, our body’s own natural way of healing?”getty imagesFor Canoy, the therapy was more appealing than surgery, since the lengthy recovery from surgery wouldn’t jibe with her roles as a mom and full-time counseling student. PRP also suited her desire for something more natural than cortisol shots, which she viewed as artificial Band-Aids that would soon fall off.A few weeks after her first injection in April, she felt practically reborn. She could lunge in yoga poses despite previous chronic hip pain and tightness—and even dip into a backbend without wanting to cry. She continually woke up fresh, rejuvenated, and largely pain-free for the first time in recent—and even distant—memory. “Once it kicked in and started working, I felt like I was 16 years old again,” says Canoy. “I felt amazing.”But when she returned for another treatment in August, after the pain had begun creeping back a few months earlier, the injections didn’t hit with the same impact. In fact, they didn’t hit at all. Now she’s back to square one—and out of the cash that the car accident settlement had provided. “Some people report that they get PRP and they’re not in pain for years and it’s the best thing ever,” Canoy says. “Unfortunately, that just wasn’t my experience.”Why PRP Is Hit-or-MissCanoy’s story illustrates the state of PRP therapy in the U.S. Sometimes it works wonders, and sometimes—albeit rarely—it doesn’t work at all. Often it does something in between. Where any one person lands depends on a host of factors, including their overall health, the extent of their condition or injury, and which practice or professional they visit—as well as what tools, protocols, and backgrounds those clinicians have.“There’s a lot of PRP out there, and it’s not all the same,” says Mary Wendel, MD, a primary care physician in Massachusetts turned hair-loss specialist who delivers PRP and uses it herself. “You can go to almost any spa on any corner during your lunch hour and get PRP, and who knows what treatments you’re getting and what systems they’re utilizing and who actually is giving it and what their training is. Those things are really important to get the best results.”Because PRP is derived from your own body and not classified as a drug, its use as a medical treatment is not—and has never been—up for approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. (The devices that administer the injections, though, are cleared by the agency.) And while PRP has been around for decades, the lack of rigorous clinical trials means it’s still largely experimental in the U.S.Why would a pharmaceutical company fund such an investigation if the product (your own blood) isn’t something it can package and sell? Translation: If you want PRP here, it’s on your—not your insurance company’s—dime. And that “dime” could be up to $1,500 per session.“I say every day, ‘Thank god I’m lucky enough to pay for it,’ ” says Andrea Mennella, a beauty publicist in New York who’s undergone the injections multiple times for hair loss. “If you don’t have the discretionary income, you could be screwed.”Charting the Shockingly Fast RiseDespite its limitations, interest in the blood therapy has soared in recent years. What was once an out-there intervention pursued by world-class athletes who had the luxury of traveling abroad for care is now a treatment known by a colloquial acronym and promoted to address everything from fine lines to infertility. Some projections expect the PRP market to grow from $594 million in 2024 to $1.8 billion by 2034.“Prior to me knowing much about PRP, I just viewed it as an expensive Hail Mary right before you go to surgery,” says Dr. Morse, the foot and ankle surgeon. But then she joined a new practice and began to integrate PRP into her offerings. “Now I am a full-fledged believer in our body’s own power to heal.”She’s not the only one. Kim Kardashian and Hailey Bieber have tried PRP for youthful skin. Athletes like Rafael Nadal and Tiger Woods have used it to fast-track injury recovery and up their game. And biohacking extremist Bryan Johnson predictably took PRP to the next level by infusing his son’s plasma into his own bloodstream in the hope of taking digits off his biological age. (Spoiler: It didn’t work.)“There’s a huge movement where people are trying to really feel their best, and that’s where I’m seeing a lot of this interest,” says Amanda Kahn, MD, an internist and longevity specialist in Manhattan who refers patients to PRP practitioners. She’s even used it herself, to plumpen sunken undereyes caused, at least in part, by GLP-1-related weight loss. Yep: Just like Ozempic-related hair loss, so-called “Ozempic face” seems to be a boon for PRP. It’s “a downstream effect of another very popular trend,” Dr. Kahn says.Levi Brown / trunkarchive.comThe move away from fillers like Botox and toward more “natural” solutions in aesthetic medicine is also driving the interest in it, says Kseniya Kobets, MD, a cosmetic dermatologist at Montefiore Einstein. She likes PRP—in conjunction with laser treatments or microneedling, a.k.a. the “vampire facial”—for overall skin rejuvenation so much that she uses it herself. Not only does microneedling plus PRP stimulate collagen, Dr. Kobets says, but it also “decreases swelling almost immediately and redness almost immediately and cuts down on a few days of downtime.”Still, as in most areas of PRP use, the research on the therapy in her field is largely mixed. One small randomized trial comparing microneedling plus PRP with microneedling plus a placebo solution found little difference between the two. But another paper looking at 13 studies found that PRP worked for a range of dermatological goals, including skin rejuvenation, hair restoration, wound healing, and fat grafting.The looming question in most PRP cases, then, isn’t whether or not PRP works—but under what set of protocols, with what equipment, and on whom.“Two clinics can produce very, very different quality of PRP, and different-quality PRP reflects different results,” says Courtney Coons, a board-certified nurse practitioner who specializes in nonsurgical facial rejuvenation at a plastic surgery practice in Beverly Hills.The Great Promise of PRPRachel Roberts was on a group run in 2016 when she let her ego get the best of her. The Seattle-based attorney and avid mountaineer knew charging up a hill would aggravate her already sore Achilles tendon, but holding back wasn’t in her nature. A few strides in, Roberts knew she’d made a mistake. “That was pretty much the moment…it started hurting and didn’t stop for a long time,” she says.It wasn’t until 2019 that the persistent pain finally pushed her into physical therapy. After nine months and only a little progress, she opted for PRP. Though she didn’t love how the lack of insurance coverage indicated a dearth of research into it, she was comforted that her physical therapist had seen good results with patients like her in the past.“At that point, it had been four years and I couldn’t really run anymore, and I thought, Maybe this will actually do something,” says Roberts, 42. For the most part, it did: Today, she can run-walk and rock climb, and last year she even attempted to summit Denali for the second time. But because Roberts’s definition of “taking it easy” around month three of recovery included cross-country skiing for five hours one day and hiking five miles (including a 1,500-foot elevation gain) a day or two later, her physical therapist warned she might never fully recover.Orthopedic issues, including foot and ankle injuries, are among the more established uses for PRP (though the jury is out on Achilles problems in particular). One 2023 paper reviewing its effectiveness in treating an assortment of musculoskeletal troubles called PRP “promising” for “a variety of conditions,” with “clear evidence of safety.” Another review of studies found that PRP significantly reduced pain in people with knee osteoarthritis and helped with their daily functioning, activity, quality of life, and stiffness too.Lauren E. Borowski, MD, a primary care sports medicine specialist at the NYU Langone Sports Medicine Center, says she performs about three to five PRP injections each week, often for knee arthritis and other joint and tendon issues. She’s even undergone the therapy herself for tennis elbow and hip issues, the