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Weight Loss Home | Arthritis | Excess Weight Worsens Knee Osteoarthritis

The Connection Between Obesity and Arthritis

Here's a guide to understanding the connection between excess weight and arthritis. If you're overweight or obese, you are not alone - you're among nearly 130 million other U.S. adults. Obesity is the second leading cause of preventable death and is closely linked to conditions such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, arthritis, gout, asthma, and gum disease. WebMD has created a weight loss clinic to addresses this public health epidemic.

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Excess Weight Worsens Knee Osteoarthritis

Extra weight can make knee osteoarthritis worse, especially for people with moderately misaligned knees.

Osteoarthritis is the most common kind of arthritis. It involves the breakdown of joint cartilage, a rubbery tissue that cushions the ends of bones.

About 6% of adults aged 30 or older have osteoarthritis in at least one knee. Knee osteoarthritis is a painful and potentially disabling condition. Short of knee replacement surgery, there's no proven way to stop the disease's progression, although there are therapies to alleviate the pain.

For years, experts have linked knee osteoarthritis to weight problems. People with knee osteoarthritis tend to be heavier than those without the disease.

Studies have also shown that being overweight raises the risk of developing knee osteoarthritis. But do extra pounds also aggravate the disease after it develops? That's the question posed by Boston University's David Felson, MD, and colleagues.

Felson and colleagues studied 228 veterans and Boston-area residents with knee osteoarthritis. Participants were about 66 years old and mostly males.

Body mass index (BMI) was calculated to gauge their total body fat. Their average BMI was about 30, the minimum definition of obesity. The researchers also took X-rays of the participants' affected knees at the start of the study and 30 months later.

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Extra weight was linked to risk of the progression of knee osteoarthritis. For each two-point increase in BMI there was an 8% increased risk that the knee osteoarthritis would worsen.

But there was a catch.

Excess weight causing a worsening of knee osteoarthritis was seen only in moderately misaligned knees. Excess weight didn't affect osteoarthritis progression in either severely misaligned knees or non-misaligned knees.

Why the difference? Knees with minor misalignment may be able to handle the load of extra body weight without furthering the disease. Drastically misaligned knees might already be under so much stress that they're likely to get worse anyway. Moderate misalignment distorts the knees enough that extra weight aggravates cartilage damage.

That means that people with moderately misaligned knees might be able to hold their knee osteoarthritis in check by getting in shape. However, more studies are needed to confirm the findings, say the researchers in the December 2004 issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism.

By Miranda Hitti
Reviewed By Kathleen Zelman, MPH, RD, July 25, 2007.
Medically updated July 25, 2007.

SOURCES: Felson, D. Arthritis & Rheumatism , December 2004; vol 50: pp 3904-3909. WebMD Health Tools: "How Osteoarthritis Affects Your Knee." WebMD Medical Reference provided in collaboration with The Cleveland Clinic: "Osteoarthritis." News release, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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