Author: Stephen Johnson / Source: Big Think
- Osteoarthritis is a debilitating drug that affects millions of people worldwide, and the only treatments available merely reduce the pain.
- The new treatment delivers a growth factor into cartilage rather than into the surface of a joint, where it’d be less effective.
- The treatment represents a “significant step for nanomedicines,” one professor said, and it could someday be used to slow age-related osteoarthritis, a leading cause of chronic pain and lost productivity at work.
MIT engineers have successfully used nanoparticles to deliver arthritis-treating drugs directly into the cartilage of mice, a development that could greatly improve treatments for the debilitating condition.
The method is outlined in new paper published November 28 in Science Translational Medicine.
Osteoarthritis, a disease in which cartilage in joints gradually degenerates, currently affects more than 20 million people in the U.S. at an annual cost of about $60 billion. Worse are the costs of arthritis-attributable medical care, which have exceeded $300 billion in recent years. The condition can cause severe pain and impaired ability, and it often leaves people unable to work. But despite its far-reaching impacts, the only treatments currently available for osteoarthritis simply manage pain and symptoms.
The new treatment seeks to change that…
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