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Abstract
Arthritic diseases are a major cause of disability and morbidity, and cause an enormous burden for health and social care systems globally. Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common form of arthritis. The key risk factors for the development of OA are age, obesity, joint trauma or instability. Metabolic and endocrine diseases can also contribute to the pathogenesis of OA. There is accumulating evidence to suggest that OA is a whole-organ disease that is influenced by systemic mediators, inflammaging, innate immunity and the low-grade inflammation induced by metabolic syndrome. Although all joint tissues are implicated in disease progression in OA, articular cartilage has received the most attention in the context of aging, injury and disease. There is increasing emphasis on the early detection of OA as it has the capacity to target and treat the disease more effectively. Indeed it has been suggested that this is the era of “personalized prevention” for OA. However, the development of strategies for the prevention of OA require new and sensitive biomarker tools that can detect the disease in its molecular and pre-radiographic stage, before structural and functional alterations in cartilage integrity have occurred. There is also evidence to support a role for biomarkers in OA drug discovery, specifically the development of disease modifying osteoarthritis drugs. This Special Issue of Biomarkers is dedicated to recent progress in the field of OA biomarkers. The papers in this Special Issue review the current state-of-the-art and discuss the utility of OA biomarkers as diagnostic and prognostic tools.
Declaration of interest
The authors do not have any commercial relationships that could be construed as biased or inappropriate. The authors served as Guest Editors of this Special issue. They report no declarations of interests.
The authors are members of the D-BOARD ConsortiumFootnote3 funded by European Commission Framework 7 program (EU FP7; HEALTH.2012.2.4.5-2, project number 305815, Novel Diagnostics and Biomarkers for Early Identification of Chronic Inflammatory Joint Diseases). They conceived the concept for the D-BOARD project and actively collaborated to build the consortium.
The authors are also members of the Applied Public-Private Research enabling OsteoArthritis Clinical Headway (APPROACH) Consortium,Footnote4 a 5-year project funded by the European Commission’s Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI). APPROACH is a public-private partnership directed toward osteoarthritis biomarker development through the establishment of a heavily phenotyped and comprehensively analyzed longitudinal cohort. The research leading to these results has received partial support from the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) Joint Undertaking under grant agreement No. 115770, resources of which are composed of financial contribution from the European Union’s Seventh Framework program (FP7/2007-2013) and EFPIA companies’ in kind contribution.
Yves Henrotin is the Founder, Chairman of the Board, and President at Artialis SA (http://www.artialis.com). He is also the founder and the chairman of the board of the spin-off company of the University of Liège Synolyne Pharma SA (http://synolyne-pharma.com), a company developing medical device for the joint viscosupplementation and tissue repair.
Ali Mobasheri is Associate Dean (Research & Enterprise) in the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences at the University of Surrey. He is a visiting Professor at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and a member of the Distinguished Professors Program in the Center of Excellence in Genomic Medicine Research (CEGMR). Ali Mobasheri has received funding from the Deanship of Scientific Research (DSR), King Abdulaziz University (grant No. 1-141/1434 HiCi). He is also a member of the Arthritis Research UK Center for Sport, Exercise, and Osteoarthritis, funded by Arthritis Research UK (Grant Reference Number: 20194).
Funding information
This study was funded by the European Commission Framework 7 programme (EU FP7; HEALTH.2012.2.4.5-2, project number 305815, Novel Diagnostics and Biomarkers for Early Identification of Chronic Inflammatory Joint Diseases, D-BOARD). This study has also received financial support from the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) Joint Undertaking under grant agreement No. 115770, resources of which are composed of financial contribution from the European Union’s Seventh Framework program (FP7/2007-2013) and EFPIA companies’ in kind contribution through the APPROACH consortium.