How do you get OA?

A diagnosis of osteoarthritis means one thing: your joints have ongoing, degenerative cartilage damage. What causes this to happen is still not clear, but there are three categories that may put you at risk for OA:

1. Any trauma to your joints is likely, if not certain, to give you osteoarthritis. You may or may not notice it for years, but it will happen.

2. Your mother/father/grandmother/etc. having OA means you might have a genetic predisposition to get OA, but it depends. Some of it is how your body is put together or aligned, especially for weight-bearing joints such as knees and hips.

3. Getting old causes OA. Sometimes. You may or may not get it. We don't know why.


So we all have a clear idea of what OA is, here is the official definition. OA is "defined as a heterogeneous group of conditions that lead to joint symptoms and signs which are associated with defective integrity of articular cartilage, in addition to related changes in the underlying bone and at the joint margins." (Altman+ Osteoarthritis & Cartilage 1986)

In plain English, this basically means that anything that causes damage to the lubricating jello on the ends of your bones (called articular cartilage) will cause your joint to break down slowly, affecting not just the "jello" but the bone underneath and the entire joint structure.

One of the more important words in this definition is "heterogeneous". This implies that not just one thing causes these changes to the joint, but somehow they look the same when a doctor looks at it. This diversity is part of why we don't have a treatment for it. Just like with cancer, there will be some similarities between all the sub-diseases, but there will always be unique details which allow a treatment to work for some people but not others.

Up next: Treatment strategies for OA

Welcome

Let me introduce myself. My name is Rachel.

I am a Bioengineering graduate student in my 5th year of a PhD at Georgia Institute of Technology. By benevolent coincidence, I started research on my thesis project to develop novel biomaterials to treat osteoarthritis(OA) only a few months before I discovered that I already suffer from OA. Finding a treatment now is both personal and professional!

In this blog, I will talk about all things Osteoarthritis-related. I want to share the newest and greatest papers (the science behind why/how osteoarthritis happens, how scientists are attempting to treat it, etc.) but I also want to broaden the discussion by talking about current treatments and knowledge that you may or may not hear about from your doctor.

To let you know where I am coming from, let me backtrack a minute. My background in undergraduate was not bio-related at all. I was a Civil Engineer. Yeah, I know. How do you get from Civil to Bioengineering?

It's a long story, but I had a crisis moment after my junior year where I realized that my calling was to help people more directly through engineering. After that epiphany, I took a handful of bio-related classes, one of which was Immunology from The Best Teacher I have ever had. She - along with the amazing inner workings of the immune system - got me hooked on exploring the intrinsic power of the human immune system.

I joined Tech in August of 2006, where I found an advisor and a thesis project that involved using the immune system in an engineering fashion. My initial project involved directing the body's immune response to make implants function better and longer in the body. But that is not my thesis project because it did not work as we expected. I am eternally grateful for that. This project is infinitely more interesting, and given my personal investment in this new technology's success, my work has become my passion.

This blog is my way of sharing what knowledge I have gained as both a scientist and a patient dealing with this disease. I want to give you the most clear explanation of the cool science that we (in the science community) are doing, to empower you, and maybe even your loved ones, with the nitty-gritty science knowledge. I will also share my experiences from the patient side of things, talking about what works for me, and what other options are out there.

Thanks for joining me on this journey!