Juhani Multanen1, Eveliina Lammentausta2,
Risto Ojala2, Ilkka Kiviranta3, Arja Hkkinen4,
Ari Heinonen4, Miika T. Nieminen2,5
1Department of Health Sciences,
Jyvskyl University, Jyvskyl, 40014, Finland; 2Department of
Diagnostic Radiology, Oulu University Hospital, Oulu, Finland; 3Unit
of Orthopaedics and Traumatology, Helsinki University, Helsinki, Finland; 4Department
of Health Sciences, Jyvskyl University, Jyvskyl, Finland; 5Department
of Medical Technology, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland
The
radiological definition of Kellgren/Lawrence (K/L) for classifying
osteoarthritis (OA) gives no insight into the status of articular cartilage,
the key factor of early pathological changes of OA. The objective of the
current study was to determine whether a relationship exists between the K/L
grade and the dGEMRIC index of subjects with early OA (K/L grade 1 or 2). The
present results show that the dGEMRIC index is significantly shorter in
subjects with K/L grade 2 (N=41) as compared to subjects with grade 1 (N=22).
The dGEMRIC index was not, however, correlated with the WOMAC pain score.
Keywords