THURSDAY, Jan. 26, 2023 (HealthDay News) — A set of 15 serum biomarkers can predict clinically relevant knee osteoarthritis (OA) progression, according to a study published in the Jan. 25 issue of Science Advances.

Kaile Zhou, from the Duke Molecular Physiology Institute in Durham, North Carolina, and colleagues aimed to identify serum biomarkers for clinically relevant knee OA progression defined as the combination of joint structure and pain worsening over 48 months.

The researchers found that in a cohort of 596 individuals with knee OA, a set of 15 serum proteomic markers corresponding to 13 proteins yielded an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of 73 percent for distinguishing progressors from nonprogressors. Prediction based on these markers was improved compared with traditional prediction based on baseline structure OA and pain severity or on urinary carboxyl-terminal cross-linked telopeptide of type II collagen, the current best-in-class biomarker for prediction of OA progression (59 and 58 percent, respectively). In a second cohort of 86 individuals, the generalizability of the marker set was confirmed with an AUC of 70 percent for differentiating joint structural progressors.

“These essential biomarker sets hold promise as tools for overcoming the chicken-and-egg challenge in OA, namely, to facilitate enrichment of clinical trial cohorts with individuals likely to progress over the time course of a typical OA clinical trial (two to four years) and thereby increase the chance of trial successes through enhanced statistical powering,” the authors write.

Several authors are named inventors on a pending patent related to this work.

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