Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common form of arthritis, afflicting an estimated 35 million adults in the US alone and causing significant economic and societal impacts. The degenerative disease causes tissues in the joint to break down over time, pain, and stiffness.While there are currently no cures, the success of potential new therapies could depend on identifying the disease early and slowing its progression before it becomes debilitating.Israeli researchers in the Journal of Clinical Medicine reported almost three years ago that OA is one of the most prevalent disabling joint disorders in this country as well, but that it took an average of eight years to be diagnosed correctly.The incidence increased from 7.36 per 1,000 persons in 2013 to 8.23 per 1,000 in 2017. It was lowest in patients under 60 years old in both sexes and peaked at 60 to 70 years old, but there are many patients in the 18-to-50 age bracket as well.Now, a blood test has successfully predicted knee osteoarthritis at least eight years before tell-tale signs of the disease appeared on x-rays, according to researchers at Duke University School of Medicine in North Carolina.
An improvement on the current diagnostic tools
The research promotes the use of a blood test that would be better than current diagnostic tools that often do not identify the disease until it has already caused structural damage to the joints, they wrote.“Currently, you’ve got to have an abnormal X-ray to show clear evidence of knee osteoarthritis, and by the time it shows up on an X-ray, your disease has been progressing for some time,” said the senior author, orthopedic surgery and pathology Prof. Virginia Byers Kraus.“What our blood test demonstrates is that it’s possible to detect this disease much earlier than our current diagnostics permit,” she said.The team focused on developing molecular biomarkers that could be used for both clinical diagnostic purposes and as a research tool to aid in the development of effective drugs.Using a large UK database, they analyzed the serum of 200 white women, half of them diagnosed with OA and the other half without the disease, matched by body mass index and age. They found that a small number of biomarkers in the blood test successfully distinguished the women with knee OA from those without it, catching molecular signals of OA eight years before many of the women were diagnosed with the disease by X-ray.“This is important because it provides more evidence that there are abnormalities in the joint that can be detected by blood biomarkers well before x-rays can detect OA,” Kraus said.“Early-stage osteoarthritis could provide a ‘window of opportunity’ for stopping the disease process and restore joint health,” she explained.