Innovative arthritis treatment combines heat with exercise

Naser Nasrollahzadeh and Dominique Pioletti © Alain Herzog 2022 EPFL - EPFL engineers have discovered that increasing the temperature of cartilage in the knee during physical exertion could prevent the cartilage from degenerating. "There is currently no treatment for knee arthritis; we can offer only palliative care to reduce the symptoms,- says Prof. Dominique Pioletti, head of the Laboratory of Biomechanical Orthopedics within EPFL's School of Engineering. Pioletti has spent many years studying cartilage-related problems. He and Naser Nasrollahzadeh, who completed his PhD on the subject, recently demonstrated that it may be possible to slow or even prevent the early signs of arthritis by applying heat directly to the knee during physiotherapy sessions. This discovery is the result of over eight years of research and three thesis projects. These most recent findings have been published in eLife .¹ Cartilage temperature increases during physical activity Cartilage works as a shock absorber between the bones in our joints. Over time, cartilage in the knee loses its ability to dissipate shocks.