{Reference Type}: Journal Article
{Title}: Infrared Spectroscopy of Synovial Fluid Shows Accuracy as an Early Biomarker in an Equine Model of Traumatic Osteoarthritis.
{Author}: Panizzi L;Vignes M;Dittmer KE;Waterland MR;Rogers CW;Sano H;McIlwraith CW;Riley CB;
{Journal}: Animals (Basel)
{Volume}: 14
{Issue}: 7
{Year}: 2024 Mar 22
{Factor}: 3.231
{DOI}: 10.3390/ani14070986
{Abstract}: Osteoarthritis is a leading cause of lameness and joint disease in horses. A simple, economical, and accurate diagnostic test is required for routine screening for OA. This study aimed to evaluate infrared (IR)-based synovial fluid biomarker profiling to detect early changes associated with a traumatically induced model of equine carpal osteoarthritis (OA). Unilateral carpal OA was induced arthroscopically in 9 of 17 healthy thoroughbred fillies; the remainder served as Sham-operated controls. The median age of both groups was 2 years. Synovial fluid (SF) was obtained before surgical induction of OA (Day 0) and weekly until Day 63. IR absorbance spectra were acquired from dried SF films. Following spectral pre-processing, predictive models using random forests were used to differentiate OA, Sham, and Control samples. The accuracy for distinguishing between OA and any other joint group was 80%. The classification accuracy by sampling day was 87%. For paired classification tasks, the accuracies by joint were 75% for OA vs. OA Control and 70% for OA vs. Sham. The accuracy for separating horses by group (OA vs. Sham) was 68%. In conclusion, SF IR spectroscopy accurately discriminates traumatically induced OA joints from controls.