Bone mechanotransduction via T-type voltage sensitive calcium channel plays a key role in induction of the osteoarthritic phenotype

The scoring method showed excellent discrimination between disease stages: the pattern-based score was significantly different between all knee groups and the correlation across groups indicated a strong monotonic score increase with worsening of disease severity (Fig.2). In contrast, medial compartment thickness did not show significant differences until an advanced disease state. Conclusions: This study identified a characteristic progression in thickness map with increasing medial knee OA and the scoring method allowed for excellent differentiation between disease severities. The fact that thickness patterns can be statistically associated with increased OA severity is not trivial as thickness is known to vary among asymptomatic individuals and response to OA is partially subjectspecific. In fact the novel method introduced in this study might constitute a shift in the analysis of cartilage thickness. While a discrete reference (KLG) was used to assess the pattern-based score, the method provides continuous scoring and thus has the potential to detect more subtle differences. Clearly the method will need to be tested with larger cohorts and other OA conditions. However, the robust statistical findings here are very promising given the limited size of the training datasets used for this study.