Can I take a Closer Look at your Cartilage, please?

We’ve got to the point now, that we can cure most of the smaller conditions which we suffer. The remaining illnesses tend to be either terminal or chronic. They’re going to be with you for most of your life or they’re going to kill you, this is the sad truth. There are some rare cases in which this might not happen and the illness could go into remission and the diseases which kill have higher and higher survival rates every year.

The best way to cure a condition is to prevent it from sinking its talons in in the first place. There’s a lot of time and money poured into detection techniques and predictive factors. We now have a much firmer grasp of what causes things like cancer, arthritis, or diabetes and just who might be more at risk of those conditions. Those at risk can then be warned and advised to take steps to reduce their risk factor. Of course not everyone takes the advice they’re given but some do and never contract the illness in the first place.

Towards this end, researchers in the USA have been looking at new and interesting ways to predict the onset of the chronic condition, arthritis. Arthritis itself is over 200 individual conditions which all affect the joints in the body causing lessened mobility, chronic pain and potentially disfigurement. The research in question has been looking directly at the patterns of friction left between cartilage pads when we move around. It’s thought that through looking at these patterns, doctors will be able to predict the onset of arthritis and take steps to prevent it.

Though it’s still in the early stages and the information provided so far is more theoretical than actual, the potential here is great. Cartilage is one the things worst effected by arthritis so it makes sense that there’d be some reaction in this tissue before the disease actually set in. It’ll be exciting to see what’s discovered in the years to come.