Being overweight can prove fatal for knees: Study

For the study, doctors assessed the body fat of those people who suffered from serious knee problems during their life time.

Progression of the study
Researchers studied data from the Multicenter Osteoarthritis Study of 3,026 people who were at a risk for osteoarthritis or had early evidence of this disease.

They recruited 336 patients for this study, led by Dr. Frank W. Roemer, associate professor at Boston University and co-director of the quantitative imaging center in the department of radiology at Boston University School of Medicine.

After being followed for 30 months, almost 20 percent of the patients showed slow cartilage loss, and 6 percent showed rapid cartilage loss. Patients more prone to rapid cartilage loss had wear and tear or other injuries to the meniscus, a piece of cartilage.

Being overweight associated with rapid cartilage loss
However, the only demographic feature that predicted rapid cartilage loss was having a high BMI (body mass index) during the beginning of the study.

Roemer's team founded that being overweight was associated with rapid cartilage loss. "For every one-unit increase in body mass index, the chances of rapid cartilage loss increased 11 percent," he said.

"As obesity is one of the few established risk factors for osteoarthritis, it is not surprising that obesity may also precede and predict rapid cartilage loss. Weight loss is probably the most important factor to slow disease progression," he added.

Dr. Sean Scully, professor of orthopedics at the University Of Miami Miller School Of Medicine, Florida, agreed with the findings. "Don't let yourself get heavy. This study shows a direct correlation -- people who are heavy are the ones that are getting worse," he said.

The association between obesity and rapid cartilage loss remained even after taking into account age, gender and ethnic background.

The study appeared in the August issue of the journal Radiology.