(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- The more you weigh the higher your risk of rapid
cartilage loss, according to a new study. The National Institute of Arthritis
and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases says 27 million Americans suffer from
osteoarthritis, a type of arthritis caused by the breakdown of cartilage.
Results from the study showed the top risk factors, which lead to rapid
cartilage loss, were baseline cartilage damage, a high body mass index (BMI),
tears or other injury to the cartilage that cushions at the knee joint. Severe
lesions were also predictors of cartilage loss.
In the study, researchers looked at 347 knees in 336 patients, consisting of men
and women of an average age between 61 and 65 years old. All of the patients had
a mean BMI of 29.5, which is considered to be overweight. Knees with minimal or
baseline cartilage damage were examined. About twenty percent showed slow
cartilage loss over the 30-month follow-up, and 5.8 percent showed rapid
cartilage loss.
For one-unit increase in BMI, the odds of a patient experiencing rapid cartilage
loss increased by 11 percent. No other factors including age, sex, and ethnicity
were linked to such a rapid loss in cartilage.
"We have isolated demographic and MRI-based risk factors for progressive
cartilage loss," Frank W. Roemer, M.D. adjunct associate professor at Boston
University and co-director of the Quantitative Imaging Center at the Department
of Radiology at Boston University School of Medicine was quoted saying.
"Increased body mass index was the only non-MR-based predictor identified."
SOURCE: Radiology, August 2009
