Cartilage research and treatment of osteoarthritis

Research in the past year involving the cartilage structural components, especially the collagens and proteoglycans, has helped to increase our understanding of their complex macromolecular interactions in both normal and osteoarthritic cartilage. The number of factors that regulate the synthesis, deposition in tissue, and catabolism of cartilage, and the complexity of their interactions, continually grows. One of the most significant advances is that the powerful techniques of molecular biology are beginning to be applied to the study of articular cartilage, improving our understanding of chondrogenesis, gene expression in both normal and diseased cartilage, and genetic disorders affecting cartilage. Studies of cartilage in culture suggest the possibility of therapeutic intervention that would have a meaningful impact on disease outcome, the so-called chondroprotective therapy, but none has been demonstrated conclusively. Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs continue to be the most common mode of therapy for osteoarthritis, but recent studies have called this form of treatment into question, suggesting that analgesic therapy may produce equivalent results.