Osteoarthritis may more than double the risk for severe chronic conditions, according to a study published Tuesday in RMD Open.
The team discovered four different speeds of how osteoarthritis progresses to multimorbidity. Experts think that age, injury, being female and family history may play a role in the development of osteoarthritis — when cartilage on the ends of bones dissolves. The condition affects more than 500 million people worldwide.
About 7 in 10 people with osteoarthritis are more likely to have other chronic conditions, but it’s not clear why. Ongoing low levels of physical activity, a high-calorie diet and chronic low-grade inflammation may be behind osteoarthritis and the risk of accumulating other long-term conditions, the team wrote.
Researchers evaluated data from the Skåne region of Sweden concerning about 1.4 million residents and evaluated details on those with osteoarthritis and 67 common long-term conditions. People who were at least 40 years old as of Dec. 31, 2017, were included, and they lived in the region since 1998. Of participants, 9,846 were diagnosed with osteoarthritis. The team matched them with others of the same age and sex who didn’t have osteoarthritis.
The team tracked the cumulative number of conditions from 1998 till 2019, or until people died or relocated. Of the participants, 1,296 people with and without osteoarthritis didn’t develop any other long-term condition and 28,242 people did.
Four different patterns of progression emerged during the study period: mild multimorbidity late progression (class 1), mild multimorbidity early progression (class 2), moderate multimorbidity (class 3), and severe multimorbidity (class 4). People in class 1 had an average of 2.9 chronic conditions while class 4 had 9.6 chronic conditions. Levels of disability were lowest among those in class 1 and highest among those in class 4. “While this study did not aim to study the timing of [osteoarthritis] diagnosis in relation to multimorbidity, our results suggest that [it] can, in some cases, precede multimorbidity — as it can be observed in mild multimorbidity late progression class — while in others [it] is diagnosed when multimorbidity is already established,” the authors said in a statement.
