david

Dr. David T. Felson is a Professor of Medicine and Public Health and Principal Investigator of the NIH funded Boston University Multipurpose Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Diseases Center.  Dr. Felson’s group has done extensive clinical research on osteoarthritis (OA). They first described the  following aspects of osteoarthritis:

·        Obesity is a major cause of knee osteoarthritis and weight loss can lessen risk.

·        Bone marrow lesions on MRI both correlate with pain, are major risk factors for disease progression, and often reflect knee  malalignment.

·        MRI features  associated with pain in knee OA including not just bone marrow lesions but also synovitis and effusion.

·        Certain dietary factors may be associated with the development of OA including vitamin C, vitamin D and vitamin K.

·          Buckling and instability are common symptoms in persons with knee pain

·        OA is the most common cause in elders of mobility disability.

·        The efficacy of hyaluronic acid and glucosamine has been overestimated probably because of industry bias in publication and reporting of trial results

·        Hip osteoarthritis is rare in China but knee osteoarthritis there is more common than in the U.S., even though Chinese are thinner.

 Dr. Felson is on the steering committees of the Multicenter Osteoarthritis Studies (MOST) and the Osteoarthritis Initiative (OAI) and has  trained many clinical researchers in rheumatology and directs the NIH funded clinical research training program at Boston University.

Dr. Felson was the first nonbench science recipient of the American College of Rheumatology's  Kunkel young scientist award, was the first recipient of the ACR’s Clinical Research Award and has received also the Arthritis Foundation’s Howley Prize for major contributions to rheumatology research.