{"id":105968,"date":"2021-03-25T14:56:59","date_gmt":"2021-03-25T18:56:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/?p=105968"},"modified":"2022-10-28T18:52:21","modified_gmt":"2022-10-28T22:52:21","slug":"spotting-osteoarthritis-when-it-starts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/2021\/03\/25\/spotting-osteoarthritis-when-it-starts\/","title":{"rendered":"Spotting Osteoarthritis When It Starts"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Albro and team develop Raman spectroscope to diagnose the degenerative disease<\/strong><\/h3>\n

By Patrick L. Kennedy<\/strong><\/p>\n

With a potentially game-changing application of laser technology to a disease that affects more than 30 million Americans, Michael Albro (ME, MSE, BME) and colleagues have garnered a research grant from the Arthritis Foundation. The team\u2019s new kind of Raman spectroscope\u2014a device better known for dating fossils and detecting art forgeries\u2014might someday be used to assess the cartilage in your joints, picking up on signs of osteoarthritis before it sets in.<\/p>\n

Osteoarthritis is the most common form of arthritis as well as the most common cause of disability in adults, young and old. It afflicts 32.5 million adults in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control. The disease occurs when articular cartilage\u2014the load-bearing connective tissue that covers the ends of bones where they meet to form joints\u2014starts to wear away.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt leaves your joint with this bone-on-bone grinding contact when you walk,\u201d says Albro, using the quite common example of the knees. \u201cIt\u2019s incredibly painful and debilitating. People suffer enormously, and it takes a toll on society,\u201d given the prevalence of the disease and the costs of treating it.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Michael Albro (ME, MSE, BME). Photo by Jackie Ricciardi<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There is yet no cure for osteoarthritis; one\u2019s best hope is to get metal joint replacements, but they often wear out within two decades\u2014and many of the people afflicted are still in their 40s or younger.<\/p>\n

Indeed, says Albro, the early stages of the disease bring the best chance to halt or reverse the deterioration, once drugs that can do such a thing are developed (more on that below). So it would be a boon if clinicians could take a peek inside the joint, looking for the subtle signs\u2014like disruption of collagen fibers\u2014that signal trouble ahead.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, current methods of examining the joints\u2014MRI and radiography\u2014aren\u2019t great at visualizing soft tissue. The procedures end up functioning more like autopsies, revealing what went wrong. \u201cThey can only assess whether your cartilage has already worn away,\u201d says Albro. \u201cAt that stage, it\u2019s too late to intervene.\u201d<\/p>\n

What Albro and team have developed is the first-ever Raman arthroscope. \u201cIt\u2019s a probe that can be inserted into a patient\u2019s knee joint to diagnose the state of their cartilage health,\u201d Albro says.<\/p>\n

The scope works by picking up on Raman scattering. \u201cThe concept is, when you shine a light on a specimen, a very small number of light particles, about one in a million, will undergo a shift in wavelength,\u201d explains Albro. \u201cWhen you count these shifted photons, it gives you a remarkably precise assessment of the chemical composition of that specimen.\u201d In the case of Albro\u2019s arthroscope, he says, \u201cWe can detect the earliest stages of cartilage degeneration with terrific accuracy compared to prior technology.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Albro’s novel Raman arthroscope probing articular cartilage.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Albro\u2019s interdisciplinary team includes Mads Bergholt, a biophotonics expert at King\u2019s College in London; Brian Snyder, an orthopedic surgeon at Boston Children\u2019s Hospital; and BU colleague Professor Mark Grinstaff (BME, Chemistry, MSE, MED). The Arthritis Foundation grant gives them $300,000 over three years, beginning next month. They\u2019ve already tested the scope on sheep\u2019s knees, and will soon test it on donated human cartilage, with the aim to move on to clinical studies with live human patients.<\/p>\n

If the Raman arthroscope becomes widely available, it could have great value for screening people at high-risk for OA, like athletes, military veterans and workers in strenuous occupations, among others.<\/p>\n

As to the question of treatment, Albro says that the early diagnostic platform could in fact be what enables the development of a cure, because it can be used to test the efficacy of drug candidates.<\/p>\n

Moreover, Albro and colleagues aren\u2019t only aiming to diagnose the disease early. As they continue growing cartilage in his lab<\/a>, the Raman arthroscope can also be used to assess the quality of such lab-grown cartilage meant for placement in late-stage OA patients.<\/p>\n

The Arthritis Foundation award is the second grant Albro has received within six months (the first was from the Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation), which points to momentum in his field, he says. \u201cIt shows that in many ways, the field of orthopedics is ripe for these new approaches.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Albro and team develop Raman spectroscope to diagnose the degenerative disease By Patrick L. Kennedy With a potentially game-changing application of laser technology to a disease that affects more than 30 million Americans, Michael Albro (ME, MSE, BME) and colleagues have garnered a research grant from the Arthritis Foundation. The team\u2019s new kind of Raman […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2662,"featured_media":106013,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[236,899,541,522,255,909,252,908,245],"tags":[656,672,673,674],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105968"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105968"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105968\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":126936,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105968\/revisions\/126936"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}