Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 4, 2026
Synovial Fluid Analysis to Identify Osteoarthritis
Published on: October 20, 2022
Early signs of osteoarthritis in professional ballet dancers: a preliminary study
Manuela Angioi1, Gayle D Maffulli, Moira McCormack
1*Centre for Sports and Exercise Medicine, Queen Mary University of London, London, England, United Kingdom; †The Physiotherapy department, Royal Ballet Company, London, England, United Kingdom; ‡The Outpatient Department, London Independent Hospital, London, England, United Kingdom; and §University of Salerno School of Medicine, Salerno, Italy.
Objective:
To investigate a cohort of professional ballet dancers for evidence of early signs of osteoarthritis (OA).
Design:
One radiologist and 1 orthopedic surgeon specialized in musculoskeletal disorders analyzed magnetic resonance imaging scans independently.
Setting:
University Teaching Hospital.
Participants:
Fifteen professional ballet dancers (4 males and 11 females; age range, 19-36 years) experiencing chronic pain in the hip, knee, spine, ankle, or foot joints.
Main Outcome Measures:
Presence of osteophytes, subchondral sclerosis, joint space narrowing, cysts, and bone marrow changes; the Kellgren and Lawrence scale was used to quantify the knee OA.
Results:
In the knee, there was thinning and irregularity of the articular cartilage over the medial femoral condyle and bone marrow changes within the lateral femoral condyle. In the hip, there was a loss of joint space and a frayed labrum with deep recess. The first metatarsophalangeal joint showed evidence of osteophytic development.
Conclusions:
Early signs of OA, in different joints, were present in a small but highly selected cohort of professional ballet dancers. In future, prospective studies among a number of ballet companies should control for medical and natural history alongside the visual analysis of images and plain radiographs to confirm these preliminary results.
