$6.9 million awarded to UAB to continue knee osteoarthritis research

$46 million awarded by NIH to UAB and partners allows researchers to continue following participants enrolled in the national Multicenter Osteoarthritis Study.The National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health, has awarded a new grant expected to total nearly $46 million over five years to the Multicenter Osteoarthritis Study. The University of Alabama at Birmingham was awarded $6.9 million of the grant and will continue its collaboration with Boston University as one of two clinical centers that enrolls and follows participants.

“Osteoarthritis, especially of the knee, which the MOST study focuses on, is a major cause of disability in our country, so it is important to understand it better,” said Cora E. (Beth) Lewis, M.D., chair of the Department of Epidemiology in the UAB School of Public Health and principal investigator of UAB’s study clinical center.

Through the study, researchers intend to identify factors affecting the occurrence and progression of OA, including physical activity and bone and joint structure. The MOST cohort has been followed through 84 months with three investigative themes: mechanical risk factors, causes of knee symptoms and pain, and the long-term disease trajectory of knee OA. The new grant will continue to follow the participants to comprehensively assess pain, structure of the joints and function.

So far, the MOST study has recruited over 4,500 participants reflecting a spectrum of knee OA disease and even some without knee OA. According to Lewis, the NIA award will allow recruiting of additional participants, specifically from minority populations.

MOST is a collaborative effort developed by investigators at four core sites, including UAB, Boston University, the University of Iowa and the University of California, San Francisco, and funded by NIA. Within this award, more than $6.9 million was given to UAB’s clinical center for use from June 1, 2023–Feb. 29, 2028, and almost $46 million was awarded to the overall study.

UAB investigators include Lewis and Kelley Pettee Gabriel, Ph.D., from the UAB School of Public Health’s Department of Epidemiology, and Adam Taylor, M.D., from UAB’s Division of Clinical Immunology and Rheumatology in the Marnix E. Heersink School of Medicine.

Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health, under award number U19AG076471-01A1. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.