CHICAGO — Current hormone therapy use in postmenopausal women reduces cartilage turnover, Joanne M. Jordan, M.D., said at the 2004 World Congress on Osteoarthritis.
The study included 168 postmenopausal women, of whom 49% were African American, 23% were current hormone therapy (HT) users, and 63% had knee osteoarthritis (OA).
Rates of type II collagen cleavage measured by levels of the cartilage degradation assay and collagen II synthesis measured by type II procollagen (CPII) synthesis were lower in current HT users than in nonusers.
Taken together, these results demonstrate reduced collagen II turnover in HT users with and without osteoarthritis, Dr. Jordan reported in a poster at the meeting, sponsored by the Osteoarthritis Research Society International.
Dr. Jordan and colleagues at the Thurston Arthritis Research Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill previously reported that current HT use is associated with lower levels of serum cartilage oligomeric matrix protein, another marker of cartilage degradation.
In the current study, led by doctoral student Anca D. Dragomir, separate analyses of covariance models were used to evaluate the relationship between current HRT use and biomarker levels.
After controlling for ethnicity, age, body mass index, and knee OA status, only the reduction in mean CPII associated with current HT use was significantly associated with collagen II synthesis.
There was evidence of an association between current HT use and knee OA status for another biomarker, chondroitin sulphate epitope 846 (CSE 846), thought to be a marker of newly synthesized cartilage proteoglycan. HT users without OA had higher levels of CSE 846, compared with HT users with OA. This suggests that HT use could increase proteoglycan aggrecan production in postmenopausal women with no radiographic evidence of knee or hip OA.