Research News: Early signs of osteoarthritis much more common in cEDS, but more painful in hEDS
A new scientific conference poster has been released that investigated early stage osteoarthritis (OA) in patients with either classical or hypermobile type of Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome.
Clinically, "all patients showed deformity in one or more finger joints, most frequently at the thumb, especially the IP joint (both hyperflexion and hyperextension)." However on x-ray, relevant changes were only seen in 10% of finger joints.
"Joint space narrowing was most frequently present and significantly more in the cEDS patients compared to hEDS patients (79% vs. 21%)"
While overall 40% of the EDS patients (aged 30-50) had early OA signs, broken down they found that 58% of the cEDS vs only 17% of the hEDS patients were affected.
Across the board, rates of tenderness were 36%, "bony swelling" was 45%, and soft tissue swelling was 10%, with no significant differences were found between cEDS and hEDS patients.
Most interesting, however, was that despite far more cEDS patients having early hand OA, the hEDS patients had significantly more hand pain and disability with less hand function.
If you have any ideas why hEDS patients seem to be much more negatively affected by their comparatively rarer instances of hand OA than cEDS patients, please let me know in the comments below! I'm curious!
