Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common form of knee arthritis. OA is usually a slowly progressive degenerative disease in which the joint cartilage gradually wears away.
Cartilage is a protein substance that serves as a “cushion” between the bones of the joints. Osteoarthritis occurs more frequently as we age. Before age 45, osteoarthritis occurs more frequently in males. After 55 years of age, it occurs more frequently in female.
- Primary Osteoarthritis not resulting from injury or disease, is mostly a result of natural aging of the joint. It could also be a result of obesity or could have a lot to do with your life style or profession, which could be putting a lot of weight on your knee joint therby enabling the cartilage inside it to wear down, thereby causing a lot of pain during movement. With aging, the water content of the cartilage increases, and the protein makeup of cartilage degenerates. This also adds further to decrese the mobility within the knee joint.
- Secondary osteoarthritis is a form of osteoarthritis that can be caused by an injury, trauma to the knee joint. Repeated trauma or surgery to the joint structures could lead to secondary OA. However abnormal joints at birth (congenital abnormalities), gout, diabetes, and other hormone disorders could also lead to this condition.