Common teenage joint complaint to be investigated in Glasgow
Researchers in Glasgow are to carry out a major study into a little-known but widespread joint condition which affects teenagers and young people.
Up to 300,000 young people in the UK are thought to suffer from varying degrees of joint hypermobility which can in severe cases lead to severe joint pain and spontaneous joint dislocation, a condition known as the Benign Joint Hypermobility Syndrome (BJHS). In mild cases youngsters are often known as being "double jointed" and can be symptom-free.
But because the condition is so little-known among the medical profession, it often fails to be diagnosed, and is sometimes managed inappropriately, making symptoms worse.
Now Dr William Ferrell and a team at the Centre for Rheumatic Diseases at Glasgow Royal Infirmary have been awarded a £52,418 from the Arthritis Research Campaign to run a study involving 60 volunteers to try to find out more about joint hypermobility, which usually starts during teenage years.
"BJHS is an inherited abnormality of the connective tissues which is not very well-known," explained Dr Ferrell, a reader in clinical physiology. "It's often not diagnosed, and the problem is bigger than is recognised. At our clinic in Glasgow we are just seeing the tip of the iceberg."
Although many people with joint hypermobility do not have symptoms, for patients with BJHS it is a lifelong problem which can only be treated by pain-killers, appropriate physiotherapy and in extreme cases, surgery to fuse frequently dislocating joints. The condition is poorly controlled by current forms of therapy, and severely affected young sufferers may have to be advised not to take part in PE at school and contact sports.
Dr Ferrell plans to recruit three groups of people, those with joint hypermobility with symptoms (ie, patients with BJHS), those with the condition but with no symptoms, and a control group of healthy volunteers. He aims to compare the differences in the in muscle reflexes and the sensations originating from proprioceptors - sensory nerve endings which feed back information about muscles and tendons to the brain - in the different groups over a three-year period.
"We want to develop a better understanding of the underlying basis of joint hypermobility and to find out if there is some musculo-skeletal dysfunction involved that might be reversed by physiotherapy," added Dr Ferrell.
