Nada Abughazaleh (PhD candidate) and Dr. Walter Herzog, University of Calgary
The finding: An animal study investigating the impact of a high fat/sugar diet on body weight and joint health found that it had different effects on shoulder joints than seen previously in knee joints. Fiber supplementation was also able to protect male rats from obesity, but not in females. This suggests that metabolic osteoarthritis, a type of arthritis linked to obesity, does not affect all joints in the same way.
The future: The differing impact of diet on joint health emphasizes that other factors such as joint biology, sex hormones, gut bacteria, structural differences, immune response, and biomechanics could play significant roles in the onset or progression of metabolic osteoarthritis. This points to promising new directions for more personalized treatment approaches.
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