Guillaume Madelin1, Ding Xia1, Gregory Chang1, Svetlana Krasnokutsky2, Steven B Abramson2, and Ravinder R Regatte1
1Department of Radiology, New York University Langone Medical Center, New York, NY, United States, 2Department of Rheumatology, New York University Langone Medical Center, New York, NY, United States
In this longitudinal study, we measured the sodium concentration in
knee cartilage in 12 patients with osteoarthritis (OA) with quantitative 23Na
MRI at 7 T. Sodium measurements were performed at baseline and 16 months
follow-up (on average), with and without fluid suppression by inversion
recovery (IR). We show that only fluid-suppressed measurements show a
significant decrease of mean [Na+] in different regions of cartilage
over 16 months follow-up in OA patients. Quantitative 23Na IR-MRI
could therefore be a useful imaging biomarker to monitor cartilage degradation
over time, and help assess the efficiency of potential disease modifying OA
drugs.
