抄録
Early diagnosis and treatment can prevent the progression of joint disease, so appropriate examinations are needed that can recognize subtle cartilage degeneration at an early stage and evaluate treatment efficacy. In 58 patients with osteoarthritis (OA) of the knee, several joint markers were investigated to determine the correlations between their levels and radiographic findings. The levels of chondroitin 6-sulfate (C6S), chondroitin 4-sulfate (C4S), and type II procollagen C-peptide (pCOL II-C) were high in the patients, but the C6S/C4S ratio and the hyaluronic acid (HA) concentration were low compared with the levels in normal controls. A negative correlation was found between radiographic progression and both the C6S level and the C6S/C4S ratio, while a positive correlation was found between radiographic pro-gression and the pCOL II-C level. These results suggest that joint markers, especially C6S, the C6S/C4S ratio, and pCOL II-C, reflect damage to articular cartilage, and that measure-ment of these markers in joint fluid may be useful for the diagnosis and monitoring of early OA without radiographic abnormalities. Moreover, these parameters could possibly be applied to evaluation of therapeutic efficacy.
