A new blood test that can identify the progression of osteoarthritis in the knee is more accurate than current methods, researchers report.
It could provide an important tool to advance research and speed the discovery of new therapies.
The test relies on a biomarker and fills an important void in medical research for a common disease that currently lacks effective treatments. Without a good way to identify and accurately predict the risk of osteoarthritis progression, researchers have been largely unable to include the right patients in clinical trials to test whether a kind of therapy is beneficial.
“Therapies are lacking, but it’s difficult to develop and test new therapies because we don’t have a good way to determine the right patients for the therapy,” says Virginia Byers Kraus, a professor in the medicine, pathology, and orthopedic surgery departments at Duke University School of Medicine and senior author of the study in the journal Science Advances….