Publications by authors named "W Wirth"
Article Synopsis
- The study aimed to see if changes in MRI-defined bone marrow lesions (BMLs) and inflammatory markers are linked to cartilage loss in knees with osteoarthritis over 24 months.
- It analyzed data from 629 participants, finding that knees with no BMLs showed significantly less cartilage loss, while those with increasing BML size experienced more cartilage loss.
- The results suggest that preventing the growth of BMLs and worsening of Hoffa-synovitis could help reduce cartilage deterioration in osteoarthritis patients.
Objective: Post-treatment cartilage morphometry in the FORWARD study was performed without blinding to MRI acquisition order, involving potential reader bias. Here we obtained unbiased estimates of cartilage change post-treatment, reading year (Y)2 and Y5 MRIs with blinding to time point. We studied whether post-treatment cartilage thickness change differed between sprifermin- and placebo-treated knees.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTyphoid fever is endemic in many parts of the world and remains a major public health concern in tropical and sub-tropical developing nations, including Fiji. To address high rates of typhoid fever, the Northern Division of Fiji implemented a mass vaccination with typhoid conjugate vaccine (Vi-polysaccharide conjugated to tetanus toxoid) as a public health control measure in 2023. In this study we define the genomic epidemiology of Typhi in the Northern Division prior to island-wide vaccination, sequencing 85% (=419) of the total cases from the Northern and Central Divisions of Fiji that occurred in the period 2017-2019.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: A fully automated laminar cartilage composition (MRI-based T2) analysis method was technically and clinically validated by comparing radiographically normal knees with (CL-JSN) and without contra-lateral joint space narrowing or other signs of radiographic osteoarthritis (OA, CL-noROA).
Materials And Methods: 2D U-Nets were trained from manually segmented femorotibial cartilages (n = 72) from all 7 echoes (All), or from the 1st echo only (1) of multi-echo-spin-echo (MESE) MRIs acquired by the Osteoarthritis Initiative (OAI). Because of its greater accuracy, only the All U-Net was then applied to knees from the OAI healthy reference cohort (n = 10), CL-JSN (n = 39), and (1:1) matched CL-noROA knees (n = 39) that all had manual expert segmentation, and to 982 non-matched CL-noROA knees without expert segmentation.
The design of a sample rapid magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) acquisition protocol supporting assessment of multiple articular tissues and pathologies in knee osteoarthritis.
Osteoarthr Cartil Open
September 2024
Article Synopsis
- - The article outlines a proposed MRI acquisition protocol for clinical trials involving knee osteoarthritis, focusing on both early and advanced stages of the disease while supporting automated data analysis for specific imaging endpoints.
- - A comprehensive literature review and expert input were utilized to determine optimal MRI techniques, ensuring that the protocols can be executed within 30 minutes on standard clinical equipment.
- - The authors emphasize the importance of acquiring high-quality, longitudinal MRIs that include specific sequences for analyzing cartilage and synovitis, aiming to enhance scientific research in disease progression and treatment efficacy.