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 JUNE 29, 2007 Stop Smoking and Preserve Your Knees If you want a simple way to preserve your knees, stop smoking. Studies show that smoking hastens the loss of knee cartilage and may impair the healing of knee ligaments. A new Australian study found that 163 people with a family history of osteoarthritis who smoked had a greater rate of knee cartilage loss and knee defects than a group of 162 people who also had a family history of osteoarthritis but didn't smoke. The report by Dr. Changhai Ding of Menzies Research Institute in Hobart, Australia, appeared in the May issue of Arthritis and Rheumatism. Researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have discovered cigarette smoking impairs the recruitment of cells to injuries to the medial collateral ligament (MCL) in mice and delays healing following ligament-repair surgery. Their mouse model is a good one for human ligament injuries, but the research needs more work in animals before they take it to humans. Each year in the United States there are more than 20 million reported ligament injuries, and MCL injuries are the most common. Rick W. Wright, M.D., associate professor of orthopaedic surgery at Washington University, suggests that smoking affects anyone who needs ligament-repair surgery. He counsels his knee surgery patients to at least try to decrease smoking because, if nothing else, that will improve the healing of their surgical incisions. |
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