Role of Inflammation in Osteoarthritis

Copyright: © 2013 Jayasuriya CT, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Osteoarthritis (OA) was never classically considered to be an inflammatory arthropathy. However, recently this concept has been questioned due to ever increasing evidence suggesting that inflammation plays a key role in the progression of this debilitating degenerative joint disease. Over 55 million Americans suffer from OA for which there is no effective treatment outside of complete joint replacement surgery. Although routine, the invasiveness of this surgical procedure renders it a last resort for alleviating pain associated with the severe late stages of this disease. Today, our current understanding of OA pathogenesis and its intrinsic link to joint inflammation can open up new and innovative avenues of thinking about potential treatment options outside of surgical intervention. The traditional definition of OA differs quite significantly from rheumatoid arthritis (RA), which is primarily classified as a systemic autoimmune disease where inflammation is pivotal to its manifestation. However, recently many have acknowledged that there is also an underlying chronic inflammation present, not only in cartilage tissue but also within the synovium, which perpetuates tissue destruction of the OA joint. While not as pronounced as the inflammatory imbalances characteristic of RA, chronic low levels of inflammation of the OA joint nonetheless persists as a major factor regulating tissue catabolism.