A New Breakthrough May Help Prevent The Progression Of Osteoarthritis
There is new method which may help doctors identify osteoarthritis
at such an early stage, the Science Daily says, quoting study findings.
This progression may aid in lowering the number of hip implant
surgeries about which court documents disclose to be more than
900 cases in DePuy Pinnacle MDL.
With this latest discovery, it may be possible to delay the
development of osteoarthritis by many years, or maybe even stop it
entirely, reports the Science Daily.
There are more than 21 million Americans who have osteoarthritis. As baby boomers age, their number
is projected to grow. Osteoarthritis is among the most common causes of disability in adults around the
world, the About.com website says.
Carl Siversson, who has just defended his thesis in medical radiation physics at Lund University in
Sweden, says that osteoarthritis often attack the knee and hip joints and breaks down the impact-
absorbing cartilage found there. For those who are inflicted with osteoporosis, the progression of the
illness commonly takes many years, with growing pain which often cause to disability, according to
Science Daily reports.
What usually causes the upsurge in the number of patients developing osteoarthritis is the problem of
diagnosing and monitoring the disease before it turns palpable or serious. It has therefore been tough in
treating there has been hardship in suspending the progression of the disease, as was mentioned in the
Science Daily website.
Nevertheless, several years ago, researchers from Lund University and Harvard Medical School came up
with a strategy how to calculate the degree of osteoarthritis using an MRI scanner, even at a very early
stage. The process is titled Delayed Gadolinium-enhanced MRI of cartilage (dGEMRIC).
Siversson says that this was major progress, but one problem was that the measurements could only be
performed in a limited part of the cartilage."We have now improved the method so that we can study all
the cartilage in the joint at once. We have attained this by unraveling the problem of how to correct all
the loopholes in the MRI images," he unveils.
He adds that the better-quality mode has now been tested both on healthy individuals and individuals
with osteoarthritis, and the outcome is that the ailment can now be observed in ways that were not
previously possible, the Science Daily reports. He says that his teams are doing their work to make the
method easy for doctors to use in their practice. Their hope is that the manner will also be important for
future drug development and will make a great impact in the lowering of number of osteoarthritis-
stricken patients who usually undergo hip implants which may lead to filing Pinnacle lawsuit.