Knee OA Patient Numbers to Soar (Biloine Young @ OTW)
If current trends continue, nearly 6.5 million Americans between the ages of 35 and 84 will be diagnosed with knee osteoarthritis (OA) within the next ten years according to research presented at the November 2011 American College of Rheumatology meeting in Chicago and reported by PRWEB. People between the ages of 45 and 64 will account for more than half of the cases.
Senior author of the study, Elena Losina, Ph.D., co-director of the Orthopedics and Arthritis Center for Outcomes Research at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and the lead investigator of the study, said, “The large number of newly diagnosed cases of knee osteoarthritis in younger individuals will lead to continued increases in the use of total knee replacement. Furthermore, these data are consistent with the recently observed tripling of total knee replacement use in 45 to 65 year old persons in the U.S.”
Researchers from the Brigham and Women’s Hospital used data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC)—called the OAPol model—to estimate the number of newly diagnosed knee OA cases in the U.S. during two decades: the 1990s and the 2010s.
The researchers were able to simulate the onset and progression of knee OA in individuals with demographic characteristics similar to the U.S.-based population from age 25 until death. Data from the model were combined with CDC population estimates to project the incidence and course of knee OA in the U.S. during the time periods studied.
The researchers found that physician-diagnosed knee OA affects about 7% of Americans over the age of 45. They estimate that Americans will be diagnosed with knee OA much earlier in life in the decade of the 2010s versus the 1990s. They project that the average age of physician-diagnosed knee OA will fall from age 72 in the 1990s to age 56 in the 2010s—a difference of 16 years.
The results revealed that Americans ages 45 to54, at the beginning of the 1990s, would account for an estimated 412,214 newly-diagnosed knee OA cases over the following ten years. Among this same age group, the study found that in the 2010s, newly diagnosed knee OA cases over the next ten years are expected to exceed two million. That means about 5% of all Americans ages 45 to 54 would be diagnosed with knee OA over the next decade of their lives.
Osteoarthritis is the most common joint disease affecting middle-age and older people. It is characterized by progressive damage to the joint cartilage and causes changes in the structures around the joint. These changes can include fluid accumulation, bony overgrowth, and loosening and weakness of muscles and tendons, all of which limit movement and cause pain and swelling.