Introduction
Current trends in health reflect an important contemporary shift towards citizen engagement for health and prevention, as opposed to mere disease management.
However, broadcasting generic health messages (e.g. ‘do this, don’t do that’) has limited effects unless there is a convincing, easily perceived and personally customized body of evidence to back healthy choices.
OA risk calculators have been employed to help the public better perceive the risks and pitfalls of osteoarthritis.
Most prominent tools shown in the table below use risk estimations for OA derived from specific studies to create a digital tool that shows OA risks to the public.
OAPoI |
Osteoarthritis Policy Model, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, USA |
Initiated in 2006. A Monte Carlo computer simulation model to evaluate epidemiologic factors that affect knee OA. The model tracks every individual’s clinical course from the time of entry into the model to death, incorporating comorbidities, such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and other musculoskeletal diseases, and traumatic knee injuries, such as anterior cruciate ligament and meniscal tears. The model then outputs population-level data, including our primary outcome measures: average quality-adjusted life expectancy and lifetime medical costs. |
TOARP |
Osteoarthritis Risk Prediction (TOARP), University of California. USA |
Published in 2018 Osteoarthritis Initiative (http://www.oai.ucsf.edu) (11), a multi-center, longitudinal study of persons aged 45–79 years at enrollment, aimed at assessing biomarkers in OA including those derived from MR imaging. |
MSK |
Musculoskeletal Calculator, by Versus Arthritis and Imperial College London, UK |
Uses data from UK specific clinical studies, such as (1) The English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), (2) Health Survey for England (HSE) 2011, and (3) Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) to estimate prevalence of certain musculoskeletal disease including osteoarthritis. |
NOUS team created a new OA risk calculator that uses medical evidence from recent high evidence level medical publications. The NOUS OA Risk Calculator is expandable and can include new risk evidence when this is published. The tool is based on the CARRE health risk ontology and expands the CARRE health risk database (CARRE is an EU FP7 ICT project, Contract No. 611140, https://www.carre-project.eu/). Use the NOUS OA Risk Calculator here: https://nous.carre-project.eu/"
What data sources were used to calculate OA risks?
In order to identify high-level medical evidence of risk factors related to osteoarthritis, 2 team members (one student and one principal investigator) searched systematically in PubMed during September 2021. PubMed (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/) is a biomedical citation database provided by the USA National Library of Medicine and is considered one of the most comprehensive sources for biomedical literature search. The database provides citation details for more than 33 million scientific publications in the biomedical sciences, including includes guidelines and systematic reviews and meta-analyses produced by commonly accepted independent evidence bodies such as Cochrane Collaboration
Query |
(osteoarthritis risk) AND (meta-analysis) AND (last 5 years) |
Query as in PubMed |
(("osteoarthritis"[MeSH Terms] OR "osteoarthritis"[All Fields] OR "osteoarthritides"[All Fields]) AND ("risk"[MeSH Terms] OR "risk"[All Fields])) AND ((y_5[Filter]) AND (meta-analysis[Filter])) |
Inclusion criteria |
meta-analyses reporting on risk for osteoarthritis |
Exclusion criteria |
studies considering their evidence level low or insufficient |
Initially retrieved |
393 publications |
Retained after inclusion/exclusion criteria |
|
Results |
The above 8 publications produced:
27 different risk associations (OR= odds ratio, RR = relative risk)
|
Limitations |
only meta-analyses were included, however, a wider search might reveal individual cohort studies of high quality |
The Software
CARRE risk factor ontology – conceptual model (CARRE D.2.2, 2014 https://www.carre-project.eu/project-info/deliverables-2/ and available via the NCBO BioPortal https://bioportal.bioontology.org/ontologies/CARRE).
Figure 1: CARRE risk factor ontology – conceptual model.
Figure 2: System high level architecture.