New diagnostics and treatment for equine osteoarthritis

Background

Osteoarthritis is the most common joint disease in sport horses. It causes severe pain with varying degrees of lameness. The joint inflammation involves the joint capsule, cartilage and underlying bone. Today, early stages of cartilage and bone destruction cannot be clinically diagnosed. One of the main problems with osteoarthritis is that it is not detected until the horse starts to feel pain, which is usually late in the course of the disease, when structural changes in the joints are evident and can be diagnosed by X-ray or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). As the damage to the articular cartilage at this stage is usually so severe that it cannot be cured, we need new methods to diagnose osteoarthritis at an earlier stage. Another challenge is that we currently lack drugs that can prevent or cure the disease. In addition to humans, osteoarthritis also affects horses with similar disease progression. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recently approved and recommended the horse as an experimental animal to study osteoarthritis in humans.

Projekt overview

We have identified early degradation of joint tissues by cleavage products of bone-specific and cartilage-specific proteins, which leak into synovial fluid and blood (=sk biomarkers) in horses with joint disease. These biomarkers are identical in all animal species including humans and we can measure them in blood, synovial fluid and saliva. Using these biomarkers, we can classify joints with different degrees of disease early in the disease process and identify which parts of the joint are involved (cartilage and bone degradation). Using artificial intelligence and big data, we will then develop a biomarker panel for early diagnosis, prediction of joint damage and evaluation of the effect of different treatments and rehabilitation programs. In addition, biomarkers allow us to measure the effect of the drug and thus determine how the horse should be treated.