Racial Differences in Biochemical Knee Cartilage Composition Between African American and Caucasian American Women with MR-Based T2 Relaxation Time Measurements – Data from the Osteoarthritis Initiative

Martin Kretzschmar¹, Ursula Heilmeier², Aihong Yu³, Gabby B. Joseph⁴, Felix Liu⁵, Hans Liebl³, Charles E. McChulloch⁶, Michael C. Nevitt⁷, Nancy E. Lane⁸ and Thomas M Link⁹, ¹Musculoskeletal and Quantitative Imaging Research Group, Department of Radiology & Biomedical Imaging,, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, ²Department of Radiology & Biomedical Imaging, Musculoskeletal Quantitative Imaging Research, UCSF, San Francisco, CA, ³Musculoskeletal and Quantitative Imaging Research Group, Department of Radiology & Biomedical Imaging, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, ⁴Musculoskeletal and Quantitative Imaging Research Group, Department of Radiology & Biomedical Imaging, University of California San Francisco, San FRancisco, CA, ⁵University of California at San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, ⁶Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, ⁷Epidemiology & Biostatistics, UCSF (University of California, San Francisco), San Francisco, CA, ⁸Internal Medicine, Center for Musculoskeletal Health, UC Davis School of Medicine, Sacramento, CA, ⁹Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, Musculoskeletal Quantitative Imaging Research, UCSF, San Francisco, CA

Meeting: 2014 ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting

Keywords: cartilage and race/ethnicity, Knee, MRI

Session Information

Title: Biology and Pathology of Bone and Joint: Cartilage, Synovium and Osteoarthritis

Session Type: Abstract Submissions (ACR)

Background/Purpose: To determine whether knee cartilage composition differs between African-American and matched Caucasian-American women at risk for Osteoarthitis (OA) using in-vivo 3T MRI T2 relaxation time measurements.

Methods: Right knee 3 Tesla MRI studies of 200 subjects (100 African-American women, 100 Caucasian-American were selected from the Osteoarthritis Initiative Cohort and closely matched for age, BMI, Kellgren-Lawrence Scores (KL≤1), subcohort and clinical site. Knee cartilage was segmented and T2 maps were generated in five compartments (patella (PAT), medial and lateral femur (MF/LF), medial and lateral tibia (MT/LT)). Mean T2 relaxation time values per compartment and per whole joint cartilage were generated and analyzed spatially via laminar and grey-level-co-occurrence-matrix texture methods. Presence and severity of cartilage lesions per compartment were graded using a modified whole-organ magnetic resonance imaging score (WORMS). Statistical analysis employed paired t- and McNemar testing.

Results: Although African-American and matched Caucasian-Americans did not differ in their WORMS cartilage lesion score (p=0.970), African American women showed significantly lower mean T2 values than Caucasian-Americans in the whole knee cartilage (p<0.001), and in the subcompartments (LF: p=0.001, MF: p<0.001, LT: p=0.019, MT: p=0.001) and particularly in the superficial cartilage layer (whole cartilage: p<0.001, LF: p<0.001, MF: p<0.001, LT: p=0.003, MT: p<0.001). T2 texture parameters were also significantly lower in the whole joint cartilage of African-American women than in Caucasian-Americans (variance: p=0.001; contrast: p=0.018). In analyses limited to matched pairs with no cartilage lesions in a given compartment, T2 values remained significantly lower in African-Americans.

Conclusion: Using T2 relaxation time as a biomarker for the cartilage collagen network, our findings suggest racial differences in the biochemical knee cartilage composition between African-American and Caucasian-American women.

Disclosure:

M. Kretzschmar,
None;

U. Heilmeier,
None;

A. Yu,
None;

G. B. Joseph,
None;

F. Liu,
None;

H. Liebl,
None;

C. E. McChulloch,
None;

M. C. Nevitt,
None;

N. E. Lane,
None;

T. M. Link,
None.

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