Development of an App to engage patients at risk of osteoarthritis

骨关节炎是一种退行性关节疾病，以软骨丢失为特征，目前尚无治愈方法。它会导致关节疼痛，是全球残疾的主要原因，造成的损失约占GDP的1.5-2%。2017年，损失工作日给社会造成的损失为25.8亿GB(与关节炎数据相比)。止痛药减少关节疼痛的效果并不令人满意，而物理治疗充其量只能略微推迟关节置换的需要。关节置换术在一定程度上恢复了独立性，但不能完全恢复到越来越年轻的患者积极生活方式的标准。有20%的病例达不到患者的期望。近年来已经开发了一些药物(Sprfermin，Loricivivint，LNA043)，但由于没有提供止痛或没有正确修复软骨，或者两者兼而有之，在临床试验中都失败了。创伤性软骨损伤在39%的情况下会导致晚年的骨关节炎，但我们不明白为什么有些患者会进展，而另一些则不会。作为一项更大规模研究的一部分，我们将通过核磁共振扫描和肌肉功能测试来跟踪观察这些创伤患者。该项目将使应用程序的开发能够获得这些患者在康复期间或缺乏康复期间的额外信息。这一资源对于科学界、临床医生和制药业来说将是无价的，以便及早提供更好的医疗保健并使健康老龄化成为可能。

Osteoarthritis is a degenerative joint disease, characterised by cartilage loss, for which there is no cure. It causes joint pain, and it is a leading cause of disability worldwide costing ~ 1.5-2% of the GDP. The cost to society for loss of working days was £2.58billion in 2017 (Versus Arthritis data). Analgesics reduce joint pain unsatisfactorily and physiotherapy can, at best, marginally delay the need for joint replacement. Joint replacement restores some degree of independence but not full function to the standards of an active lifestyle of an increasingly younger patient population. In 20% of the cases does not live up to patients' expectations. A number of drugs have been developed in recent years (Sprifermin, Loricivivint, LNA043) but have failed in clinical trials for either not providing pain relief or not restoring the cartilage properly, or both. Traumatic cartilage injuries lead to osteoarthritis later in life 39% of the time, but we do not understand why some patients progress and other don't. As part of a larger study we will be following these trauma patients up by MRI scans and muscle function tests. This project would enable the development of an App to obtain additional information about these patients during their recovery, or lack of. This resource would be invaluable to the scientific community, clinicians and the pharmaceutic industry to provide better healthcare early on and enable healthy ageing.