Siewe Nourridine, Friedman Avner
School of Mathematics and Statistics, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, New York, United States of America.
Department of Mathematics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2025 Sep 22;20(9):e0332763. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0332763. eCollection 2025.
Osteoarthritis (OA), the most common form of joint disease, involves the progressive degradation of articular cartilage and is a major cause of chronic disability in aging populations. Since OA is associated with severe deficiency of collagen type II, clinical trials considered treatment of OA by injection with undenatured collagen type II (UC-II). Recent studies consider also injection of senolytic drugs, like fisetin, that eliminates senescent chondrocytes in aging patients, to reduce the negative effect of these senescent cells on cartilage structure. In this paper we develop a mathematical model of OA for men and, separately, for women, and use the model to assess the efficacy of treatment by UC-II and by fisetin, alone or in combination. Our computations show the benefits of starting treatment early. They also show that although the effect of treatment by fisetin on slowing the progression of OA is much smaller compared to UC-II treatment, its effect in combination with UC-II is significantly increased.
骨关节炎（OA）是最常见的关节疾病形式，涉及关节软骨的渐进性退化，是老年人群慢性残疾的主要原因。由于OA与II型胶原蛋白的严重缺乏有关，临床试验考虑通过注射未变性II型胶原蛋白（UC-II）来治疗OA。最近的研究还考虑注射衰老细胞溶解药物，如非瑟酮，以消除老年患者的衰老软骨细胞，从而减少这些衰老细胞对软骨结构的负面影响。在本文中，我们分别为男性和女性建立了OA的数学模型，并使用该模型评估单独或联合使用UC-II和非瑟酮进行治疗的效果。我们的计算结果显示了早期开始治疗的益处。结果还表明，尽管与UC-II治疗相比，非瑟酮治疗对减缓OA进展的效果要小得多，但其与UC-II联合使用时的效果显著增强。
