Women are much more prone to knee osteoarthritis than their male counterparts. At least that’s what a recent Canadian study published in the journal Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology.
As a reminder, osteoarthritis is characterized by the degradation of joint cartilage, particularly in the hips, knees and fingers. It is manifested by pain, stiffness of the joints or even deformation of the bones.
The researchers found that the cartilages of the meniscus suffered from a genetic difference between genders: those of women are 50% more at risk of developing osteoarthritis. Which is consistent with a common observation, women are more likely to suffer from knee osteoarthritis and develop more serious forms, moreover this ratio increases after menopause.
To arrive at this observation, they made artificial cartilage. On one side there was those that had been designed from damaged women’s meniscus cells, on the other, cartilage designed with men’s cells. They analyzed them in various conditions: with pressure exerted, at the moment of pressure relief and at rest, in a place with low gravity (such as in space), to reproduce as closely as possible the work of our knees. . The objective was to understand the molecular mechanism behind the pathology and understand the reasons for its progression.
A blood test to detect osteoarthritis of the knee?
Cartilages from female cells and those from male cells did not respond in the same way to the tests that were carried out. Some were more affected than others, those of women. So, to explain that the latter are more sensitive, they looked for genetics and discovered genes involved in knee osteoarthritiswhich happen to be particularly responsive to these low-gravity simulations.
What matters in the research of these scientists is that this discovery of genes in question could make it possible to create special drugs to treat it, but also possibly to predict this osteoarthritis in carriers. Furthermore, it advances research on the reasons why the sexes are not equally subject to certain pathologies.
Source: Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology
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