Knowing exactly what happens during joint injury may help you understand its relationship to osteoarthritis. The goal, though, is to shift the focus to joint protection and prevention of joint injury.
What Happens During Joint Injury?
Your joint is complex -- it's comprised of periarticular and subchondral bone, articular cartilage, synovial membrane (a layer of tissue that lines the joint), joint capsule, and periarticular musculature (muscles that surround and stabilize the joint). Those are its parts, so to speak.
Joint injury compromises the structural integrity of one or more of those parts. Here's what specifically happens that can contribute to the development of osteoarthritis. Harmful force or stress on a joint during injury cause:
- cartilage breakdown
- trabecular microfracture (bone bruise typically located close to a bone surface)
- bone remodeling (continual process performed by osteoclasts and osteoblasts with removal of old bone and replacement with new bone)
- ligaments
Focus on Prevention
Young people (adolescents and young adults) who experience traumatic knee injury, and middle-age people with hip or knee injuries have a significantly greater risk of developing osteoarthritis in the same joint, later in life. As a high risk group, they should be focused on prevention by using joint-stabilizing braces, avoiding high impact exercise, and embracing sports equipment designed to prevent injury.
Bottom line: It's never too soon to start following joint protection techniques. Precaution early in life may save your joints later in life.
Source:
Joint Injury in Young Adults and Risk of Subsequent Knee and Hip Osteoarthritis. Annals of Internal Medicine. Gelber AC, MD., et al. September 5, 2000.
http://www.annals.org/cgi/reprint/133/5/321.pdf
