Mary I. O'Connor, M.D., chair of the Mayo Clinic Department of Orthopedic (Florida) is testing her observation that the nagging pain and inflammation that women experience in their knees appears different from that of men encounter in a novel U.S.-Canadian study supported by the Society for Women's Health Research (SWHR) and its Interdisciplinary Studies in Sex-Differences (ISIS) Network on Musculoskeletal Health. The pilot project will examine whether biological differences between men and women affect the incidence and severity of knee osteoarthritis.
While the underlying mechanisms for differences in knee osteoarthritis between men and women are not yet known, recent studies have indicated sex differences at the cellular and molecular levels may influence development of the disease. This trial, the first to explore if there are true biological differences in women with an increased osteoarthritic disease burden, will analyze a variety of human tissues normally discarded during total knee replacement surgery for possible differences in pain fibers, and hormone and vitamin D receptors in both sexes.The study co-investigators are: Karen Berkley, Ph.D., professor emeritus, Program of Neuroscience at Florida State University; Barbara Boyan, Ph.D., the Price Gilbert, Jr. Chair in Tissue Engineering at Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University, and associate dean for Research, College of Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology; and David Hart, Ph.D., Grace Glaum Professor in Arthritis Research, McCaig Institute for Bone & Joint Health, Department of Surgery at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada.
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