Longitudinal Stability of Molecular Endotypes of Knee Osteoarthritis Patients

More than 500 million people worldwide affected by osteoarthritis (OA) are left without effective treatment options. Despite significantly different etiologies, clinical trial designs for evaluation of novel treatments still do not typically involve patient selection based on pheno- or endotypic traits.

This has likely contributed to the lack of approved disease-modifying OA drugs (DMOADs) and the high risk of unsuccessful intervention trials in the field.

In recent years, various factors indicating diverse patient subpopulations of OA have been described, including phenotypes driven by cartilage, metabolic syndrome, subchondral bone, inflammation, and trauma injury, but their underlying pathobiological mechanisms have not been fully elucidated nor have they been validated by differential treatment response.

In our recent publication we found that tissue turnover biomarkers can reliably identify knee OA endotypes across different OA populations, and these endotypes remain stable over time. This breakthrough takes us one step closer to developing a biomarker-based tool for prognostic enrichment in clinical trials, paving the way for more precise and effective OA treatments.

Article: Longitudinal stability of molecular endotypes of knee osteoarthritis patients