This improvement might enable earlier treatment interventions, potentially changing the diseases effect and progression.Early detection of knee osteoarthritis could lead to treatments that slow development and bring back joint health.A blood test effectively predicted knee osteoarthritis at least eight years before telltale signs of the illness appeared on x-rays, Duke Health researchers report.In a research study appearing April 26 in the journal Science Advances, the researchers verified the precision of the blood test that identifies key biomarkers of osteoarthritis. They revealed that it predicted development of the disease, as well as its progression, which was demonstrated in their earlier work.The research advances the utility of a blood test that would be exceptional to current diagnostic tools that often do not determine the illness till it has triggered structural damage to the joint. Using a big United Kingdom database, the researchers evaluated serum of 200 white women, half diagnosed with OA and the other half without the disease, matched by body mass index and age.They discovered that a small number of biomarkers in the blood test effectively distinguished the women with knee OA from those without it, capturing molecular signals of OA eight years before many of the ladies were identified with the disease by x-ray.
