What is osteoarthritis?
The body consists of many bones of different shapes and sizes that are interconnected. Some are connected via movable joints, where the bone-endings are covered with articular cartilage, which acts shock absorbing, prevents wear of the bones and reduces friction under the joint movement. This cartilage is thus an important protection of the bone-endings that form part of the joint. If the cartilage is not there, the bones will rub directly against each other and damage the bone tissue, after which the person will feel a strong pain.
With age, most people will suffer from osteoarthritis. Osteoarthritis is due to a continuous loss of joint cartilage. The pain begins when the cartilage becomes thin and uneven before disappearing completely. At the same time, the joint-capsule becomes thicker, more joint fluid develops, and the joints swell up. The joints that are most commonly affected are the knee and hip joints, the base-joint of the big toe and the middle and outer joints of the fingers.
A Danish study investigates the healing ability of the joints
Damaged tissue will often be able to rebuild itself and thus heal, if it receives the right treatment. However, a recent Danish study has uncovered that this is unfortunately not the case for joint cartilages. The study was conducted in Denmark on 23 Danish patients aged 18 to 76, of whom 13 had osteoarthritis and eight had healthy knees.
The study was published in the recognised Science Translational Medicine and shows that the joint cartilages lose their ability to grow and restore themselves when the skeleton is fully matured, whether you have osteoarthritis or not. This means that injuries endured from work or sports activities that damage the joints, are not able to heal, contrary to damage to ligaments, bones or muscles that can restore themselves by growing and creating new tissue. The cells in the cartilage have thus lost the ability to divide themselves as they did during childhood, as it had to adapt to an altered situation. These findings surprise the researchers behind the study, which had otherwise expected that damaged cartilage cells were able to regenerate like muscle and bone tissue.
Therefore, there are less positive news for the many patients who suffer from osteoarthritis. Nevertheless, it has made us wiser about the characteristics of joint-cartilages, which could likely contribute to understanding which treatment methods are to be relevant in the future or not, in terms of diseases such as osteoarthritis. Unfortunately, there is presently no curative treatment of osteoarthritis, but the subject is large in the research world, as the number of patients is increasing and the possibilities are few. However, most patients will unfortunately still live with their daily pain.
Sources:
1) http://www.netdoktor.dk/sygdomme/fakta/slidgigt.htm
2) http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/8/346/346ra90
3) http://politiken.dk/viden/art5628677/Forskere-afliver-håbet-om-at-slidgigt-kan-kureres
