Is Osteoarthritis Keeping You Out of the Arena?

Osteoarthritis (OA), sometimes referred to as degenerative joint disease, is a chronic, ongoing degenerative disease of cartilage. It can affect any articular joint, meaning a joint where two cartilage-covered bones meet. But what exactly is OA, and is your horse affected by it? OA can affect any horse at any age, and 60% of all equine lameness is related to it (USDA, 2000; Caron, 2003). OA is often associated with poor performance, early retirement, and a significant financial burden for owners of affected athletes (McIlwraith, 2012). It is an active response to joint injury resulting from abnormal remodeling of joint tissues, driven by a host of inflammatory mediators within the affected joint (Loeser, 2012). The extracellular matrix of articular cartilage is composed of proteins and glycoproteins, principally collagen, and several others (Fox, 2009).

The progression of OA is driven, at least in part, by upregulation of cartilage matrix degrading proteases, pro-inflammatory cytokines and genes that modulate inflammatory or catabolic processes within the joint (Loeser, 2012). The result is loss of articular cartilage caused by extracellular matrix breakdown, the hallmark of arthritis (Liu, 2009). This multi-factorial cascade of events may be amenable to molecular interventions targeting these mediators of joint degradation, but it is unlikely that blocking only one of these catabolic factors would be sufficient to suppress the multiple inflammatory and catabolic factors involved in the progression of osteoarthritis (Zhang, 2017).

The α2M molecule is unique among plasma protease inhibitors because of its ability to inhibit virtually any protease. In addition, it binds and regulates the activity of a number of cytokines, binds and regulates the activity of a number of hormones, and has demonstrated regulation of genes (Rehman, 2013). To learn more about how Alpha2EQ® puts α2M to work, read the science or contact us.