Thursday, February 9, 2012

Excess weight speeds arthritis: study

(HealthScout) UPDATED 2009-07-14
Being overweight or obese speeds up the breakdown of the cartilage in the knee joint, leading to osteoarthritis (OA), researchers say. For a new study, investigators recruited 336 people, all of whom were overweight and at risk for osteoarthritis. However, all had minimal or no loss of cartilage in their knees at the start of the study. Scientists found that after 30 months, 20.2 percent of the study participants showed a slow loss of knee cartilage, and 5.8 percent showed rapid loss. Being overweight was linked with rapid cartilage loss, with every one-unit increase in body mass index increasing the chances for rapid cartilage loss by 11 percent.  Read full story >
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