Obesity Increases Risk of Cartilage Loss

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- The more you weigh the higher your risk of rapid cartilage loss, according to a new study.  The National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases says 27 million Americans suffer from osteoarthritis, a type of arthritis caused by the breakdown of cartilage. 

Results from the study showed the top risk factors, which lead to rapid cartilage loss, were baseline cartilage damage, a high body mass index (BMI), tears or other injury to the cartilage that cushions at the knee joint. Severe lesions were also predictors of cartilage loss.

In the study, researchers looked at 347 knees in 336 patients, consisting of men and women of an average age between 61 and 65 years old. All of the patients had a mean BMI of 29.5, which is considered to be overweight. Knees with minimal or baseline cartilage damage were examined. About twenty percent showed slow cartilage loss over the 30-month follow-up, and 5.8 percent showed rapid cartilage loss.

For one-unit increase in BMI, the odds of a patient experiencing rapid cartilage loss increased by 11 percent. No other factors including age, sex, and ethnicity were linked to such a rapid loss in cartilage.

"We have isolated demographic and MRI-based risk factors for progressive cartilage loss," Frank W. Roemer, M.D. adjunct associate professor at Boston University and co-director of the Quantitative Imaging Center at the Department of Radiology at Boston University School of Medicine was quoted saying. "Increased body mass index was the only non-MR-based predictor identified."

SOURCE: Radiology, August 2009

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