When ‘synovitis’ is not synovitis
Although osteoarthritis (OA) is still clinically referred to as a ‘noninflammatory’ arthritis, because physical signs of overt inflammation at the patient level are often absent or mild, both cellular and molecular inflammation are widely recognized to be active components of OA pathogenesis. Moreover, osteoarthritic processes have been proposed to be conceptually similar to those in a chronic wound, whereby constant stimulation of innate inflammatory pathways by tissue damage leads to a chronic remodeling response by the entire synovial joint organ.
