Differences in Bone and Cartilage Between Women with Anterior Cruciate Ligament Tears and Healthy Controls
Abstract
Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tears increase the risk of osteoarthritis (OA) leading to degradation of cartilage and bone. While the contribution of bone in OA development is unclear, evidence suggests that bone changes accompany cartilage degradation. This study aims to explore the relationship between subchondral compact bone thickness and cartilage thickness by comparing women with ACL reconstructions (ACLR) 5 years post-injury to uninjured controls using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and high resolution peripheral quantitative computed tomography (HR-pQCT). We found that ACLR knees had thicker subchondral compact bone in the lateral femur than contralateral knees (12.9% thicker, p=0.013) and injured participants had more subchondral compact bone thickness side-to-side variation than controls (>6.4 times increase, p<0.004). We did not detect cartilage thickness differences (p>0.06). This study demonstrates that subchondral compact bone thickness differences are prominent following injury, as measured by HR-pQCT, which may provide novel insight into OA pathogenesis.
Description
Keywords
Engineering--Biomedical
Citation
Bhatla, J. (2017). Differences in Bone and Cartilage Between Women with Anterior Cruciate Ligament Tears and Healthy Controls (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/25708