Arthrosis and Osteoarthritis
Arthrosis, also known as osteoarthritis is a degenerative disease characterized by progressive cartilage degradation. It is an insidious joint pathology because people are generally unaware of the condition until the first painful symptoms appear. Since the cartilage has no nerves, and it is not sensitive, it is only when it is broken or inflamed, that you can feel the pain. It usually happens after the age of fifty even if the disease may start developing much earlier in life. So the pain in the case of this disease is a belated alarm signal. The joint surfaces of bones are covered with a sort of hard gelatin called articular cartilage. It serves as a protection against pressure and a shock absorber. Articular cartilage constantly renews itself from its base (the bone) to its periphery. Thus, it is not an inert tissue, and osteoarthritis is not an irreversible process, as we believed before, because the cells that compose the cartilage tissue regenerate it all the time. Osteoarthritis involves progressive destruction of cartilage. First, there are cracks, and then the cartilage virtually disappears, being replaced by bone proliferation.