Grant: Project Grant

Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common form of arthritis, affecting about 10% of the world's population aged 60 years or older. It is the major source of joint pain and disability, and imposes substantial socioeconomic burden on society with a cost estimate between 1.0% and 2.5% of gross domestic product. Presently, available treatment is entirely directed at controlling the pain associated with OA with joint replacement for end-stage disease. This is unlikely to change in next few years, reinforcing the relevance of targeted interventions at early stage of the disease or even before the development of symptoms. As a result, clinicians have a challenging task of identifying those at highest risk of developing severe OA in a timely manner. However, the prediction of OA risk is still in its infancy. Using a metabolite profiling method, we identified seven novel metabolic markers that are related to knee OA with greater power to discriminate OA patients from controls than any other biomarkers identified so far. Given that OA manifests first as abnormal joint tissue metabolism before any structural changes can be detected, these novel metabolic markers would have great potential for early diagnosis of OA. We therefore propose to examine the predictive values of these novel metabolic markers for knee OA early changes in well-established longitudinal cohorts. The results will provide a better understanding of how these novel metabolic markers predict early OA diagnosis and OA worsening. These novel metabolites could also be potential novel targets for drug development for OA.