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Excess Weight Speeds Up Osteoarthritis

TUESDAY, July 14 (HealthDay News) -- If fear of heart disease and diabetes isn't enough reason to slim down, here's another: Being overweight or obese can cause rapid deterioration of the cartilage in the knee, leading to osteoarthritis, researchers report.

Osteoarthritis usually progresses slowly, but some patients experience a more rapid progression. This is the first study to connect obesity with fast progression of the disease and cartilage loss.

The report is published in the August issue of Radiology.

The researchers recruited 336 patients from a major osteoarthritis study. All were overweight and at risk of osteoarthritis, but had minimal or no loss of cartilage in their knees, said the researchers, who were led by Dr. Frank W. Roemer, an adjunct associate professor at Boston University and co-director of the quantitative imaging center in the department of radiology at Boston University School of Medicine.

During 30 months of follow-up, 20.2 percent of the patients showed a slow loss of knee cartilage and 5.8 percent had rapid cartilage loss, the study found.

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