New specific and sensitive disease endpoints are critically needed to alleviate roadblocks to development of disease modifying therapeutics for osteoarthritis (OA). A key step in this process is the development of standardized definitions of OA. Standardization of OA definitions would aid communication across the field and help advance drug development for OA and research by achieving consensus on globally recognized definitions of disease and globally recognized standards for classifying the disease. We anticipate that these definitions could facilitate communication about the disease among industry and non-industry researchers, regulatory agencies, funding agencies, third party payers, and patients.
We further anticipate that these definitions would be maintained by the Osteoarthritis Research Society International (OARSI) and be subjected to regular refinement as new scientific advances demand. Definitions proposed are not intended to distinguish an OA patient uniquely from patients with other forms of arthritis; but rather, they are intended to provide definitions of the disease process that supercede the many and varied OA phenotypes, to spur scientific advances, and facilitate communication with regulatory agencies. The draft definitions can be viewed as the building blocks for defining OA phenotypes. We fully acknowledge that these building blocks are likely most applicable to knee and hip OA, possibly helpful for hand OA, but will require modification for spine OA.
Reference:
Osteoarthritis Cartilage. 2015 Apr 9. pii: S1063-4584(15)00899-7. doi:
10.1016/j.joca.2015.03.036.
Definition of OA
Osteoarthritis is a disorder involving movable joints characterized by cell stress and extracellular matrix degradation initiated by micro- and macro-injury that activates maladaptive repair responses including pro-inflammatory pathways of innate immunity. The disease manifests first as a molecular derangement (abnormal joint tissue metabolism) followed by anatomic, and/or physiologic derangements (characterized by cartilage degradation, bone remodeling, osteophyte formation, joint inflammation and loss of normal joint function), that can culminate in illness.