Faculty
Schulich School of Medicine
Supervisor Name
Dr. Tom Appleton & Dr. Trevor Birmingham
Keywords
Osteoarthritis, Mechanical Stress, Cartilage, Microvascular Dysfunction
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Description
What if I told you that late-stage knee osteoarthritis (OA) patients had hangry knees? Well, many late-stage knee OA patients suffer from a phenomenon called synovial microvascular dysfunction. This means the blood vessels that grow in their synovium are leaky and cannot deliver nutrients or oxygen to tissues of the knee joint, such as the cartilage. As a result, the cartilage undergoes degradative and inflammatory processes that exacerbate the progression of knee OA. My research this summer focused on uncovering what causes synovial microvascular dysfunction, and ultimately hangry knees, in this disease context. It is well known that mechanical stress is associated with this phenomenon, so we relied on cartilage explants from late-stage knee OA patients undergoing knee replacement surgery to test the potential effects of mechanical stress on synovial microvasculature.
Acknowledgements
I would like to extend my sincerest thanks to my supervisors, Dr. Tom Appleton and Dr. Trevor Birmingham. Your support and mentorship over the past year has been monumental in my professional development over the course of my research projects.
I would also like to acknowledge Dan Klapak, Garth Blackler, Mckenzie Carter, Dr. Holly Philpott, and Courtney Brooks who helped me throughout the design and data collection portions of this project.
Finally, I would like to thank the Collaborative Specialization in Musculoskeletal Health Research program, the USRI program, and the Faculty of Health Sciences for their support.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Document Type
Video
Let’s Talk Stress: Decoding Mechanically Stressed Cartilage’s Signals to Synovium in Knee Osteoarthritis
What if I told you that late-stage knee osteoarthritis (OA) patients had hangry knees? Well, many late-stage knee OA patients suffer from a phenomenon called synovial microvascular dysfunction. This means the blood vessels that grow in their synovium are leaky and cannot deliver nutrients or oxygen to tissues of the knee joint, such as the cartilage. As a result, the cartilage undergoes degradative and inflammatory processes that exacerbate the progression of knee OA. My research this summer focused on uncovering what causes synovial microvascular dysfunction, and ultimately hangry knees, in this disease context. It is well known that mechanical stress is associated with this phenomenon, so we relied on cartilage explants from late-stage knee OA patients undergoing knee replacement surgery to test the potential effects of mechanical stress on synovial microvasculature.