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The way I am demonstrating osteoarthritis is through a clay art project. I started with my base color of brown – to easily demonstrate/identify the difference between bone and cartilage – and used white to display the cartilage. The project is to demonstrate the knee. The top bone is the humerus and the bottom is the tibia. On one side, where bone would meet bone, is the accurate representation of how much cartilage should cushion between the 2 bones. The other side of the project demonstrates how much decay happens and, if the trend continues, bone willbegin rubbing on bone. A normal, healthy knee joint would have a healthy amount of cartilage cushioning both balls at the end of the humerus. A degenerative knee joint will lose all its cartilage, if not all, and eventually, bone rubbing against bone causes the humerus and tibia to begin decaying and breaking down.
My project is going to be about osteoarthritis. Osteoarthritis, or OA, is a degenerative condition of the joints where the cartilage in-between the bones decays, along with theunderlying bone. It starts typically around middle age onward and two of the main symptoms are pain and stiffness of the joints. Common places of OA are in the hip, knees, and thumbs – high use joints. It affects nearly 1-in-2 people by the age of 85, most commonly in the knee (Pan et al., 2016). This is the leading cause for lack of mobility in elders. Although this disease is affected by wear and tear, hormones play a major role in OA. Similar to what we learned throughout the bone unit about osteoporosis and hormones, osteoarthritis is similarly affected. Women are much more susceptible to OA than men due to the presence of oxytocin. Oxytocin, or OT, is a hormone present in women that is secreted by the posterior pituitary and plays an essential role in reproduction (Ferrero et al., 2021). It has also been shown to be produced by peripheral tissues, such as osteoblasts – bone building cells (Ferrero et al., 2021). It has been shown that OT plays a role in OA. The reason is because oxytocin is a low-grade inflammatory disorder which affects the entire joint and causes many issues (Ferrero et al., 2021). It is a hormone that causes cartilage damage, the main issue of osteoarthritis. Sex differences are especially prevalent. However, it’s much more difficult to understand disease progression once the disease has significantly progressed. In young women, articular cartilage surface areas are about 17.5% to 23.5% lower than men (Pan et al., 2016). This is most likely due to oxytocin’s role in cartilage decay. The inflammatory response within the joint is caused by a lower amount of OT, therefore causing OA. This happens with age and as we get older, such as after menopause, women’s sex hormone levels decrease; hence why OA becomes more present in middle-aged women and older. Lack of sex hormones after menopause leads to a lack of oxytocin leading to higher levels of OA. Overall, osteoarthritis is a very common joint disease that affects millions. It’s most common in women due to the hormonal changes and the lack of oxytocin. Knowing how osteoarthritis occurs and understanding how it works is so important regarding disease.
Ferrero, S., Amri, E.-Z., & Roux, C. H. (2021, October 29). Relationship between oxytocin and osteoarthritis: Hope or despair?. MDPI.
https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/22/21/11784
Pan, Q., O’Connor, M. I., Coutts, R. D., Hyzy, S. L., Olivares-Navarrete, R., Schwartz, Z., & Boyan, B. D. (2016, June 2). Characterization of osteoarthritic human knees indicates potential sex differences – biology of sex differences. BioMed Central.
https://bsd.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13293-016-0080-z#cites