Biology: Could our "inner salamander" lead to arthritis treatments?

The Guardian said:

Contrary to popular opinion, humans can regrow cartilage in their joints, researchers have found. Experts hope the research could lead to new treatments for a common type of arthritis.

Osteoarthritis, in which joints become painful and stiff, is the most common form of arthritis and is thought to cause pain in about 8.5 million people in the UK alone. It is caused by a breakdown in the cartilage that protects the ends of the bones, as well as the growth of new bone around the joint as the body tries to repair the damage.

It has long been thought that adult humans are unable to produce new cartilage, unlike a number of animals, including salamanders, which can not only repair damage to joints but grow whole new limbs.

Now researchers say they have found fresh evidence that adults can produce new cartilage. They say the process is more common in joints less prone to osteoarthritis, and appears to be linked to small molecules that control the regrowth of limbs in animals such as the salamander.

“We like to call it our inner salamander,” said Prof Virginia Kraus, the co-author of the research from Duke University, in North Carolina.

Writing in the journal Science Advances, Kraus and colleagues describe how, as proteins age, their amino acid building blocks undergo a particular chemical modification. If the rate of this chemical change is known, it is possible to work out the ratio of young to old proteins in tissue by looking at the degree to which these changes have built up.

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