The Arthritis Australia scholarship has supported me for a very productive 1-year FTE equivalent administered from January 2019 to March 2020 in the Doctor of Philosophy degree at The University of Sydney. The project submitted for this application was entitled the INTERLOCK study which intended to evaluated laboratory and clinical outcomes of the infrapatellar fat pad (IFP) in end-stage knee osteoarthritis (OA) patients undergoing total knee replacement. Administrative paperwork and protocol establishment for flow cytometry was carried out before recruitment commencing in February 2019. However, due to insufficient subjects, the recruitment strategy was revised in May 2019 with an additional three months to assess the effectiveness of changes. In total, 4 participants were recruited over six months and hence the study was deemed not feasible. The protocol and feasibility findings have been written up as a chapter in my final thesis that will be submitted later in 2020.
To supplement the clinical study, existing tissue samples from an animal study investigating post-traumatic OA (PTOA) were evaluated for gene expression and histological disease severity to understand the relationship between the IFP and the other structures within the joint including the synovium. As part of this project, we developed a novel instrument to evaluate sub-synovial fibrosis in the murine model. This work has resulted in three chapters of the final theses (1. Methods, 2, IFP and synovium, 3, IFP and other structures) and will be incorporated into a bigger manuscript for submission on which I will be a co-first author.
Between April 2019 and February 2020, I also carried out a systematic review and meta-analysis evaluating the relationship between IFP inflammation and pain in pre-clinical and clinical studies in the current literature. The manuscript for this study (which is also a chapter) is being revised before re-submission. In January 2020, I also commenced a study evaluating the same relationship in a publicly available database: The Osteoarthritis Initiative. This manuscript (and chapter) is currently under peer-review with the Osteoarthritis and Cartilage Journal.
I also was the winner of the Musculoskeletal Centre for Research Excellence Infographic Competition with my entry entitled “5 Things you need to know about the IFP and OA”.