Change in knee structure and change in tibiofemoral joint space width: a five year longitudinal population–based study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Change in knee cartilage volume is frequently used as a proxy for change in knee joint space width over time, but longitudinal data on these associations is limited. We aimed to determine whether change in knee cartilage volume, new or worsening meniscal extrusion (ME), meniscal tears and cartilage defects over 2.4 years correlated with change in joint space width (JSW) over 5 years in older community dwelling adults. METHODS: Participants (n = 153) had their right knee imaged using MR imaging and x-ray at baseline, and after 2.4 years (MRI) and 5 years (x-ray). Cartilage volume, cartilage defects, meniscal extrusions and meniscal tears were assessed on sagittal T1-weighted fat-suppressed MRI. JSW was assessed using standard fixed semi-flexed view radiographs, and scored on those with adequate alignment. RESULTS: Participants were 51-79 (mean 62) years old; 48% were female. Cartilage volume reduced over time (medial -134 ± 202 μL/year, lateral -106 ± 165 μL/year, p < 0.001), as did JSW (medial -0.05 ± 0.16 mm/year, lateral -0.12 ± 0.24 mm/year, p < 0.001). In multivariable analysis, the only consistent predictor of change in JSW was new or worsening ME (medial tibia R(2) 3.1%, p = 0.031; medial femur R(2) 3.2%, p = 0.024); change in cartilage volume correlated with change in JSW laterally (R(2) 4.8%, p = 0.007) and was borderline medially (R(2) 2.2%, p = 0.064); there was no association for meniscal tears or cartilage defects. The magnitude of these associations were similar albeit somewhat greater for ME in participants with radiographic OA (R(2) 6.2%, p = 0.017). CONCLUSION: Change in ME and cartilage volume weakly predict change in JSW, but the vast majority of the variation remains unexplained. Since MRI examines cartilage directly while radiographs examine it indirectly, these results cast doubt on the validity of using JSW as a proxy measure of cartilage loss.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".