The Arthritis Foundation recently came out with its list of the top 10 arthritis events for the year 2007. This series will focus on those events.

#8: Availability of National Institutes of Health’s Osteoarthritis Data and Images

The Osteoarthritis Initiative (OAI) is a multi-center, four-year observational study of knee osteoarthritis (OA) in men and women sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The OAI consortium includes public funding from the National Institutes of Health and private funding from several pharmaceutical company partners managed by the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health.

The objective of the OAI is to develop a public domain research resource based on collection and analysis of clinical data, radiologic information and biospecimens from people with early and progressive osteoarthritis.

There are four centers around the U.S. with nearly 4,800 participants that range from being at risk of developing knee OA to having advanced knee OA. The participants provide: blood, urine and DNA specimens; X-ray and MRI images; and clinical data, such as diet, medication use, and pain, function and general health assessments.

The OAI partnership released the fourth, and largest, set of data in 2007. This includes a series of state-of-the-art images and clinical outcomes that will accelerate the rate of scientific research and identification of structural and biologic markers for osteoarthritis.