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Cartilage Damage Helps Detect Osteoarthritis?
– Reported, July 03 2013
(Ivanhoe Newswire) — Osteoarthritis is the most common joint disorder and affects about one-third of older adults. New research suggests that cartilage damage from exercise may aid in early detection of osteoarthritis.
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that the nanoscale biomechanical properties of cartilage at joints change at the earliest stages of osteoarthritis, which makes the tissue more prone to damage during fast physical activities.
“Our techniques enable detection of the earliest loss of mechanical function associated with daily activities involving high loading rates, such as running and jumping. The findings can also be used to evaluate replacement tissue to ensure that it can survive these daily activities, Alan Grodzinsky, senior study author at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was quoted as saying.
Osteoarthritis is the deterioration of cartilage, the hard, rubbery tissue that cushions the bones and prevents them from rubbing together. During the earliest stages, cartilage will lose molecules called glycosaminoglycans (GAGs), which reduce the ability of the tissue to resist impact caused by exercise.
Little is known about how GAG loss affects the functioning of cartilage across a wide spectrum of activities, until now. Grodzinsky and his colleagues developed a new system to measure the biomechanical properties of cartilage in response to cyclic compression forces that simulated a range of exercises.
GAG-depleted cartilage turned out to be less capable of increasing stiffness to deal with forces associated with high-levels of activities, like running, when it was compared to normal cartilage. Also, researchers found that GAG loss resulted in a dramatic increase in the ability of fluids to flow out of the cartilage.
“We discovered that GAG-depleted tissue is most vulnerable to high rates of loading and not just the magnitude of the load. This finding suggests that people with early degradation of cartilage, even before such changes would be felt as pain, should be careful of dynamic activities such as running or jumping, Grodzinsky was quoted as saying.
SOURCE: Biophysical Journal, April 2013