FRIDAY, Sept. 12 (HealthDay News) -- Osteoarthritis represents a significant public health burden that might be lessened with weight loss and management interventions aimed at decreasing lifetime risk of symptomatic knee osteoarthritis, according to a report in the Sept. 15 issue of Arthritis Care & Research.
Louise Murphy, Ph.D., of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and colleagues used data from 3,068 participants of the Johnston County Osteoarthritis Project to estimate overall lifetime risk for symptomatic knee osteoarthritis, and to estimate risk stratified by sex, race, education, history of knee injury and body mass index.
Overall, 44.7 percent of patients developed symptomatic knee osteoarthritis with no significant differences based on sex, race and education, the investigators found. History of a knee injury increased lifetime risk to 56.8 percent, and lifetime risk also increased with body mass index where two in three obese patients developed symptomatic knee osteoarthritis, the report indicates.
"Nearly half of the adults in Johnston County will develop symptomatic knee osteoarthritis by age 85 years, with lifetime risk highest among obese persons," according to the authors. "These current high risks in Johnston County may suggest similar risks in the general U.S. population, especially given the increase in two major risk factors for knee osteoarthritis: aging and obesity. This underscores the immediate need for greater use of clinical and public health interventions, especially those that address weight loss and self-management, to reduce the impact of having knee osteoarthritis."
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