Abstract #0875

Vastus Lateralis/vastus Medialis Cross-Sectional Area Ratio Impacts Presence and Degree of Knee Joint Abnormalities and Cartilage T2 Determined with 3T MRI an Analysis from the Incidence Cohort of the Osteoarthritis Initiative

Judong Pan¹, Christoph Stehling^2,3, 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.