New Hope for the Treatment of Osteoarthritis

Image via WikipediaOsteoarthritis is a disease with many underlying backgrounds, it has wide variants of symptoms and variable progression. Despite those confusing triggers, osteoarthritis follows a consistent pathway in its pathogenesis.

In the beginning, the proteoglycans gradual loss will eventually lead to diminishing articular cartilage which can be partial or complete. Thus, articular cartilage is the central focus of our attempt to find treatment for osteoarthritis.

Despite enormous progress in the research of osteoathritis, the mechanisms of the underlying pathogenesis which responsible for osteoarthritis are mostly unknown. Many studies have been conducted to grasp an understanding on the molecular basis for the progression of the degeneration of cartilage that will ultimately cause osteoarthritis, but it seems that we are not there yet.

Ilona Polur and her colleagues from Harvard School of Dental Medicine, hypothesize that

"... excessive mechanical force, due to either overloading on a normal joint or normal loading on a defective joint, can incite chondrocytes, thus resulting in increased chondrocyte activity, such as chondrocyte clustering, during the early stages of the degenerative process."

They further focus their study on the expression of HtrA1 which is a substrate identified as the pericellular matrix component of chondrocytes. It suggests that inhibition of HtrA1 enzymatic activity may slow down the progression of osteoarthritis.

Their study brings a new hope for those in waiting for a good news for the treatment of osteoarthritis, but it seems that we still have to wait a little longer for this study to be implemented as a cure for osteoarthritis in the near future.