Age-conditioned Metabolic Changes of the Articular Cartilage– Relationship with the Development of Osteoarthritis

Overview

Osteoarthritis is the most frequent articular disease which affects 12 % of the white population. Itstreatment costs three times more than the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. A number of riskfactors for the development of osteoarthritis was detected. The main ones are age, sex, race, geneticfactors, life style and obesity. Processes which take place during ageing of cartilage are in manyrespects similar to the pathogenesis of osteoarthritis. The cartilage loses its elasticity and firmnessas a result of wear and in particular as a result of qualitative and quantitative changes in thecapacity of chondrocytes to synthetize components of the extracellular matrix. Deterioration of thequality of cartilage is also promoted by posttranslation changes of the macromolecules with a highbiological half-life and changes in the regulation of proteolytic enzyme production. At present it is,however not clear whether the pathogenesis of osteoarthritis includes identical processes asage-dependent metabolic dysfunctions or whether it is a time dependent disease which differs fromnormal ageing and has different causal mechanisms.

Key words:
articular cartilage, ageing, pathogenesis of osteoarthritis