New methods for diagnosing and preventing osteoarthritis
A new method that helps doctors diagnose osteoarthritis at an early stage could delay the progression of the disease by years or prevent it altogether.
Osteoarthritis is one of the most common chronic diseases and a leading cause of disability.
One of the problems with osteoarthritis is that it is difficult to diagnose and monitor the disease before symptoms become apparent. This makes it difficult to change or delay its progression. A few years ago, researchers at Lund University and Harvard Medical School developed a method to assess the extent of osteoarthritis using MRI, even at a very early stage.
Illustration photo - Internet.
The researchers say this is a major advance, but one problem is that current assessments can only be performed on a limited amount of cartilage. The researchers are now working to improve the method so that they can look at all the cartilage in a joint at once.
This innovative approach has now been tested on both healthy people and people with osteoarthritis, with results showing that the disease can now be monitored in ways that were previously not possible.
The authors are now working on making the method more accessible to clinicians. They hope it will also have implications for future drug development.
(According to Tien Phong)
