AB0104 ARE POLLUTANTS A NEW RISK FACTOR FOR OSTEOARTHRITIS? RESULTS FROM A SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW

Background: Prevalence of knee osteoarthritis (OA) has doubled since the mid-20th century. Interestingly, this increase cannot be explained solely by longer life expectancy and the obesity epidemics (1). Therefore, other environmental factors known to have increased in the recent years could be part of the explanation. Objectives: We performed a systematic literature review (SLR) to summarize the existing knowledge about associations between OA and pollutants. Methods: Pubmed database was used to identify studies reporting data on OA and pollutants in humans (examples of MeSH terms: ”Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCB)” or ”Lead”). Abstracts from international congresses were reviewed for the past 2 years, combined with manual curation. Studies were classified in epidemiological clinical studies, pollutants assessments in ex vivo OA joint tissues, and in vitro effect on human chondrocyte. Results: As of January 15, 2019, 193 potentially relevant articles were screened. Among them, 14 were selected. After manual curation, a total of 21 full text articles were analyzed. Ten articles reported epidemiological clinical studies. Four articles underlined the link between PCB and OA: in the 3 articlesreporting associationwith past exposure to PCB, the most robust one showed that risk of OA was significantly increased, at least in men (OR 4.1 [95%CI: 1.8-11.2] for men and 1.3 [95%CI: 0.8-2.3] for women). In the 4 th study, the highest serum concentration of PCB was associated with a higher risk of arthritis: maximal adjusted OR (aOR) was 3.2 [95%CI: 1.6-6.7], p Conclusion: This SLR suggests a possible link between OA and pollutants but the designs of the studies, the populations investigated and the type of pollutants were still too heterogeneous and limited to conclude definitively that pollutants represent a new environmental risk factor for OA. However, this SLR highlights a critical need for novel epidemiological, clinical and basic research studies in order to identify other potential environmental factors in OA. References [1] Wallace, PNAS 114(35), 2017 Disclosure of Interests: None declared