Background/Purpose:

Osteoarthritis is a chronic, inflammatory, multifactorial disease. The metabolic syndrome (MS) has been linked to this disease; adipokines levels have been associated in the pathogenesis of OA, several studies have described this association in patients with late OA, however few studies had described the behavior in patients with early OA.

Objectives:

To assess the levels of adipokines and inflammatory cytokines in three groups: 1. Healthy people, 2. Early OA with MS and 3. Early OA without MS.

Methods:

A cross-sectional study was realized, which included patients with early knee OA who met the inclusion criteria: patients with osteoarthritis according ACR criteria, early knee OA (Kellgren and Lawrence classification ≤ 2), overweight or obesity.  Patients included were divided divided into two groups, with and without metabolic syndrome (MS) and were compared with a group of control patients. Demographic data were collected and serum adipokines and inflammatory cytokines were evaluated by ELISA (R & D Systems®). Descriptive statistics and bivariate applied using nonparametric tests, with 13® STATA software.

 Results:

164 patients with OA and 42 healthy controls were studied. The mean age was 49.6 ± 6.0 in the osteoarthritis group with metabolic syndrome (OAMS), 46.55 ± 6.98 and 46.92 ± 6.7 for groups of osteoarthritis without metabolic syndrome (OAnMS) and healthy controls respectively. There were 83.3% women in the group of OA with metabolic syndrome, 89.1% OA without metabolic syndrome group and 95.2 % in the control. The mean BMI was 31.32 ± 4.04 OAMS group, 27.60 ±12.62 OAnMS and 26.48 ± 4.83 for the control group.

We evaluted the serum levels of cytokines: NGF, IL-6, IL-8, HGF, MPC-1, TNF-α, IL-β and PAI-1 and we found  stadistical differences between groups. Most of the cytokines were higher in patients with OAMS group “NGF (nerve growth factor), HGF (hepatocyte growth factor), MCP-1 (macrophage chemoattractant protein-1), TNF-α (tumor necrosis factor-α) and PAI-1 (plasminogen activator inhibitor-1)” and the levels of IL-β were the same in all groups and other cytokines like IL-6 and IL-8 were increased in the healthy control group.  Regarding the adipokines, as it shows in table 1, adiponectin was found higher in patients with OAnMS, and like the resistin and leptin were significantly in the OAMS group.

Conclusion:

We found a significant difference between the levels of cytokines and adipokines, this supports that in the early stages of OA, adipokines levels are elevated, it is likely that in the future, we can be study patients with OA phenotypes according to the serum levels of adipokines. It is noteworthy that our entire population was overweight, including the control group. A possible confounding factor is that the three groups studied were overweight, which can influence the levels of adipokines.

« Back to 2015 ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting

ACR Meeting Abstracts - https://acrabstracts.org/abstract/adipokine-serum-levels-in-patients-with-early-knee-osteoarthritis-with-and-without-metabolic-syndrome/