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Metabolic imaging of the joint

Project description

Metabolic imaging for better diagnosis and treatment in osteoarthritis

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a form of progressive arthritis, affecting at least 10 % of the European population. It degrades synovial joints in hands, knees, hips and spine, leading to stiffness, severe pains and disability. Early detection and evaluation of OA’s course is crucial for efficient treatment. However, conventional X-rays or MRI scans are used that offer limited information on tissues’ clinical picture. For this reason, the EU-funded METAJOINT project aims to introduce an innovative evaluation method: metabolic imaging for joint disease. It is based on MRI-enabled visualisation of specific elements’ (sodium, phosphorus, deuterium) distribution. This will allow to identify special tissues’ turnover and metabolic aspects of joints and will enable accurate prediction of the disease, proper medication treatment and better guidance for patients.

Objective

Osteoarthritis is a painful and disabling life-altering joint disease and the most common form of disability in our society. There are very limited treatment options for osteoarthritis and in most cases, osteoarthritis is slowly progressive, sometimes over a period of decades. More than 10% of entire the population in Europe has osteoarthritis in knee, hip or hands that leads to disability, pain and limited quality of life. In the METAJOINT study we propose to test new metabolic imaging methods of joint disease using MRI that can visualize the distribution of specific elements such as sodium, phosphorus and deuterium. As these elements are taken up in the tissue dependent on disease characteristics, the method can identify tissue turnover or metabolic aspects of the diseased or healthy joint, whereas conventional MRI detects hydrogen protons that provide only the amount of tissue such as cartilage thickness or volume. The aim of METAJOINT concerns the scanning of a limited set of a total of 15 patients for three imaging methods to scan for respectively phosphorus, sodium and deuterium, showing - for the first time – subchondral bone turnover through uptake of bisphosphonates, sodium retention in cartilage in patients with high salt concentration, and glycosaminoglycan turnover in cartilage through uptake of heavy water. This new ground-breaking evaluation method for joint disease will help pharmaceutical companies with better outcome measures in order to find disease modifying medication that can treat osteoarthritis and it can be used by physicians and surgeons for early detection of osteoarthritis and early prediction of the course of the disease, which helps to better guide patients with early or late phase osteoarthritis.

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CSA - Coordination and support action

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) H2020-FETOPEN-2018-2020

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Coordinator

UNIVERSITAIR MEDISCH CENTRUM UTRECHT
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 100 000,00
Address
HEIDELBERGLAAN 100
3584 CX Utrecht
Netherlands

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Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 100 000,00
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