Sarmad Muneeb Siddiqui1,2, Rahwa Iman2, Jan Wooten2, John Kurhanewicz2, Michael Ries3, Xiaojuan Li2
1University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA; 2Radiology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA; 3Orthopaedic Surgery, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
Osteoarthritis (OA) is a multifactorial disease that is characterized primarily by the progressive loss of articular cartilage. Current radiological imaging techniques are limited to observing morphological changes that occur at relatively late stages of the disease. However, the biochemical composition of cartilage changes even in early stages of the disease. The goal of this study is to determine whether there are any significant, detectable changes in the spectra of healthy and osteoarthritic human cartilage using HRMAS spectroscopy. Results suggest that there were significant differences in cartilage biomarkers such as Choline, Alanine, and Glycine, between OA and healthy cartilage.