| The past decades, world wide research identified the major risk factors for developing osteoarthritis (OA) of the knee. The next important step in osteoarthritis research, also based on recent developments on intermediate outcome measures in OA, is to test preventive strategies in high risk groups. Overweight is the major modifiable risk factor in knee OA. Overweight most often is caused by an unbalanced food intake in relation to physical activity, a way of life which is hard to change. To accomplish any change in such behavior, a tailor made intervention with diet and physical activity is the most successful. However, an intervention with glucosamine, a product with growing scientific evidence for its chondroprotective actions, is probably much more easy and feasible then the above mentioned intervention. During the past decades, world wide research identified in large prospective cohort studies the major risk factors for developing osteaoarthritis (OA) of the knee and hip. We now have insight in the major (yes or no modifiable) risk factors. It is widely believed that the cause of OA is multi-factorial. Systemic factors as well as local mechanical factors play a role. However, how these factors exactly lead to osteoarthritis and how these factors interact with each other is still unclear. The prevalence of knee OA is almost twice the prevalence of hip OA. People who went through intrinsic knee injury [1] In this feasibility study we will test the feasibility of the procedures used, the compliance to the interventions, and the usefulness of intermediate outcome measures in this specific high risk group. This results in the following study questions: OA is the most frequent joint disease [3], and is a chronic disease causing pain and disability of especially hip and knee. Social and medical costs for this disease are enormous; the medical costs in 1999 in the Netherlands were 304 million Euro, of which 236 million Euro were for women with OA. OA in the knee is almost twice as frequent as OA in the hip [3] Design: The study is a randomised controlled trial with factorial design, open labelled for the tailor made intervention to reduce weight, and double blinded for the intervention with glucosamine. |
