Avner Friedman
The Ohio State University
Title
Mathematical modeling of osteoarthritis and its treatment
Abstract
Osteoarthritis is a disease of the joint, with the knee as the most common location. The disease is a progressive destruction of the cartilage between the two adjoining bones, it causes increasing levels of pain, and in severe cases it requires knee replacement. 33 million Americans are affected annually, with 1.5 women than men.
OA increases with age, typically starting to become noticable after age.50 The disease cannot be cured, and currently there are only few clinical trials that aim to slow its progress.
In this talk I will explain the biological background of the course of the disease and present a mathematical model of OA by a system of PDEs The model will then be used to demonstrate how a combination of two specific drugs can effectively slow the disease progression, especially if treatment starts early.
This is a joint recent work with Nourridine Siewe from RIT.