ABSTRACT
Aim: To assess the potential usefulness of measurements of serum levels of cartilage oligomeric matrix protein (COMP) and YKL-40 in patients with knee osteoarthritis (OA) as biochemical markers of ostcoarthritic status.
Methods: 40 patients having symptomatic knee OA and meeting the ACR criteria for idiopathic knee OA and 15 healthy subjects matched with age and sex as controls were included in this study. Serum COMP and YKL-40 levels were measured by ELISA tech¬nique. The levels of these markers were compared according to the changes in joint space width (JSW), Kellgren Lawrence (K-L) grade, age, disease duration, gender, body mass index (BMI) and western Ontario MacMaster (WOMAC) index in our OA patients.
Results: There were significant elevations of the serum COMP and YKL-40 in OA pa¬tients in comparison to the control group (P<0.001), more in bilateral than unilateral cases. There were highly significant positive correlations of both parameters with K-L radiological severity of the disease, but an inverse significant correlation with JSW (P<0.001). As regard synovitis, there was significant increase of serum YKL-40 (P<0.05) while serum COMP level showed a slight but insignificant increase. There were highly significant positive cor-relations of serum COMP and YKL-40 levels with WOMAC index and age (P<0.001) while there were no significant correlations with disease duration and body mass index (BMI) (P>0.05). C-reactive protein (CRP) was significantly higher in OA patients than in controls and showed positive significant correlation with serum level of YKL-40 (P<0.001). There was a positive highly significant correlation between both parameters (P<0.05).
Conclusion: From these results we concluded that, the raised levels of serum COMP and YKL-40 can reflect disease severity and multiple joint involvement. YKL-40 may be a useful marker of synovitis in OA. The combined use of both markers can help in early diagnosis and improve prediction of disease status.
|
