Judong Pan1, Christoph Stehling2,3,
Christina Muller-Hocker4, Benedikt Jakob Schwaiger5,
John Lynch6, Michael Nevitt6
1Radiology and Biomedical Imaging,
University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA , United States; 2Radiology
and Biomedical Imaging, University of California, San Francisco, San
Francisco, CA, United States; 3Department of Clinical Radiology,
University of Muenster, Germany; 4Technical University of Munich,
Germany; 5Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich, Germany; 6Department
of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of California, San Francisco,
San Francisco, CA, United States
Quadriceps
strength has been extensively studied in relationship to knee osteoarthritis
(OA). However, the role of vastus lateralis and vastus medialis in OA remains
unclear. We examined 176 non-symptomatic subjects with risk factors for OA
selected from the Osteoarthritis Initiative incidence cohort using cartilage
T2 mapping technique and 3 Tesla MRI morphological analyses. We found that higher
vastus lateralis to medialis cross-sectional area ratio is associated with
significantly lower cartilage T2 values and less morphological abnormalities
detected by MRI. Our data suggested that vastus lateralis/medialis balance
may play an important role in the pathogenesis of early OA.