Never Feel The Pain Again!

A leading cause of disability, osteoarthritis affects over 15 million Indians every year, and doctors are discovering new ways to treat it

- Anita Bartholomew And Kathakoli Dasgupta

IN 2005, Sukla Bhattacharya, an associate professor at Visva-Bharati University, Shantiniketan, refused to let the pain in her left knee slow her down. At 55, she would ride her scooter, shop for groceries, cook for herself, besides going to the university to teach her students. But then her knee screamed in protest. X-rays revealed her diagnosis: osteoarthritis (OA), often simply called arthritis, the most common of joint disorders. If you’ve ever eaten a chicken leg, that rubbery gristle you see covering the ball and socket where the bones meet is actually cartilage, much like our own.

“This spongy material cushions the bones, absorbs shocks and stops them from rubbing against each other,” explains Dr Rajiv Chatterjee, consultant, Orthopedics, Columbia Asia Hospital, Kolkata. And this is what gets damaged in OA, usually after decades of wear and tear, or through injury to the joint. Although it typically starts in the cartilage, OA may not stop there.

What’s Up With That Joint?

“Once the cartilage is damaged, the bone that supports it starts to get damaged,” says Philip Conaghan, professor of musculoskeletal medicine at the University of Leeds and Medical Advisor to Arthritis Research, UK. Cartilage is slow to grow back ; the bone grows instead, attempting to fill the gap. This ‘repair’ makes it worse.