The most common form of arthritis, osteoarthritis is a painful and debilitating condition where the cartilage around the joints thins, causing the bones to rub together. There is no cure for the condition, which generally affects older people and women in particular. But new research is offering some hope to sufferers.
American researchers have uncovered the molecular mechanism that is central to the development of osteoarthritis pain and their discovery could lead to newer, more effective treatments for the condition.
The discovery is important because, until now, the scientific focus has been on understanding why and how the cartilage around the joints degenerates and little attention has been paid to why this degeneration hurts. The specific joint pain suffered by osteoarthritis patients is usually triggered by activity that involves a mechanical movement of the joint, such as walking or climbing stairs. Rest generally alleviates the pain.
To test this mechanical component, research teams from Rush University Medical Centre and Northwestern University used surgical mouse models that displayed the slow progression of osteoarthritis to monitor molecular mechanisms and pain behaviour in neurons in the knee.
Their focus was on how pain developed along with changes in the nerves that carry information from sensory organs to the brain – these nerves are known as dorsal root ganglia (DRG). They discovered that a chemokine known as monocyte chemoattractant protein (MCP)-1 (CCL2) and its receptor, chemokine receptor 2 (CCR2), play a key role in the development of pain associated with osteoarthritis of the knee.
By exploring and examining the pain pathway, the US research team is taking the field of osteoarthritis research into a new direction that could offer new and better pain therapies for patients.
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