New Imaging to Help People with Arthritis

Using state-of-the-art imaging, researchers find a new biomarker for osteoarthritis, leading to more targeted treatment and helping slow disease progression, reports a new study.

New study is one step closer to finding a new biomarker for osteoarthritis, a painful condition that affects over 300 million people worldwide. The findings of the study are published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences.

Researchers are learning more about changes at the molecular level with mass spectrometry imaging that show the cartilage damage severity, a key feature of the condition.

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‘Osteoarthritis affects approximately 2.2 million Australians and over 300 million people globally, with those aged over 45 most at risk. ’
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The University of South Australia study has mapped complex sugars on osteoarthritis cartilage, showing that different sugars are linked to damaged tissue than healthy tissue.

The findings will likely help overcome the challenge of identifying why cartilage degrades at different body rates.

"Despite its prevalence in the population, there is a lot about osteoarthritis that we don't understand," states Associate Professor Paul Anderson. "It is the most common degenerative joint conditions, yet there are limited diagnostic tools, few treatment choices, and no cure."

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Existing osteoarthritis biomarkers are still largely focused on body fluids, which are neither reliable nor sensitive enough to map all the changes in cartilage damage.

By understanding the biomolecular structure at the tissue level and how the joint tissues communicate in the early stages of osteoarthritis, researchers believe molecular changes may point the way to better medicine and treatments.

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Study lead Olivia Lee stated that mass spectrometry imaging was especially significant with the technique already used to identify biomarkers for different cancer types.

"To date, diagnosing osteoarthritis has relied massively on x-rays or MRI, but these give limited information and don't detect biomolecular changes that signal cartilage and bone abnormalities," she said.

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"By contrast, alternative imaging methods like MSI can identify distinct molecules and organic compounds in the tissue section."

Source-Medindia