Michigan Tech researchers, addressing osteoarthritis, have discovered something unforeseen and intriguing, but only time will tell the impact it may have on society.

The research involved is part of Associate Professor Tammy Haut-Donahue's quest to prevent osteoarthritis, a common and painful disability that affects more than twenty million Americans.

The condition results from the breakdown of joint cartilage, which covers the ends of bones. With less cushion, more cartilage is worn away, and a painful rubbing of bone on bone occurs.

Haut-Donahue's inquiry centers on the knee, in particular, the meniscus, which includes two crescent-shaped buffers of fibrocartilage that disperse friction and distribute the load where the femur and tibia meet in the knee joint.

It's a broad investigation that involves collaboration with scientists at Michigan State University. At Tech, Haut-Donahue leads a research team of five doctoral students and three undergraduates.

One of the latter is Nicole Lepinski, a Minnesota native who is looking into the degradation of the meniscal cartilage as a result of traumatic injury.

Lepinski, a senior, has looked at how the meniscus responds to a damaged anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), a tough strap of tissue that helps hold the knee in place. Her research looks at the number of cells in the meniscal tissue and the subsequent changes in cell density as the tissue degrades.

In an attempt to understand sports injuries, other researchers have surgically severed the ACL and assessed the impact of the cut on the knee joint meniscus. They found little or no changes. This is not natural, however, as normally there is an impact that occurs to traumatically tear the ACL, such as during a jump landing in basketball.

Lepinski's work is novel: instead of cutting the ACL, she works with impacted knee joint models with torn ACLs, as would occur in many sports-related injuries.

Lepinski's finding: the meniscus morphology is altered and shows signs of degradation when the ACL is torn traumatically.

"The number of cells seems to stay the same, but the density has increased," she says.

"Her findings aren't what we expected," Haut-Donahue says. "In fact, we were expecting to see a decrease in the number of cells."

The significance? "There are, in fact, changes that occur in the meniscus following traumatic ACL injury, and, therefore, surgeons might need to treat the meniscus as well as the torn ACL to prevent osteoarthritis," Haut-Donahue says.

As well, once scientists understand the complicated processes that lead to degeneration of the knee joint, they could develop treatments to protect the meniscal cartilage following trauma and prevent the underlying articular cartilage in the knee joint from deteriorating in the first place.

Lepinski's work included authorship of a scholarly paper. She describes her project as "a great academic opportunity that could one day have even greater medical applications."

"I've always been interested in life processes," she adds. "Our bodies are their own universe."