Epidemiology and treatment of pain associated with osteoarthritis of the knee in Germany: A retrospective health claims data analysis

Objective: Osteoarthritis of the knee (knee OA) is a serious joint disease leading to pain and reduced quality of life. Pharmacological treatments include anti-inflammatories, analgesics, intraarticular hyaluronic acid, and intraarticular corticosteroids while for severe knee OA, knee replacement is an option. This study examined the incidence, prevalence, patient characteristics, and uptake of medical and surgical treatments in knee OA patients in Germany. Design: A non-interventional, retrospective health claims data analysis with anonymized data from the InGef database was performed. Patients ≥18 years were analyzed cross-sectionally for each year 2015–2020. Newly diagnosed patients in 2015 were also longitudinally analyzed until end of 2020. Results: Annual knee OA prevalence increased from 7.07 ​% in 2015 to 7.39 ​% in 2020. Annual incidence proportions ranged from 1.71 ​% in 2015 to 1.46 ​% in 2020. Knee replacement was the most common surgery, with rising patient numbers (e.g., 7918 patients in 2015 and 8975 patients in 2019). Approximately 62 ​% of patients newly diagnosed in 2015 received prescription pharmacological pain treatment during follow-up. Most (96.95 ​%) received non-opioid analgesics, followed by weak opioids (8.14 ​%) and strong opioids (3.00 ​%) as first-line treatment (combinations possible). Knee surgery was performed in 16.6 ​% of patients during follow-up. Median time from first diagnosis until surgery was 346 days for any knee surgery and 564 days for knee replacement. Conclusions: The number of patients with knee OA in Germany is steadily rising, along with an increasing number of surgical interventions, especially knee replacement. Time until first surgery and knee replacement is relatively short, even for newly diagnosed patients

Supplemental Data Set 4

Analysis of NMD Target Features and Overlap between NMD- and Light-Regulated AS

Supplemental Data Set 2

Computational Analysis of Transcriptome-Wide Differential Gene Expression

Supplemental Dataset 1

Computational Analysis of Transcriptome-Wide AS

Supplemental Data Set 7

Computational Analysis of Transcriptome-Wide AS Changes in Response to Red Light Based on the Data from Shikata et al. (2014)

Supplemental Data Set 5

Categorization of Light-Regulated and Reference Gene Sets into Functional Subgroups

Data from: Alternative splicing substantially diversifies the transcriptome during early photomorphogenesis and correlates with the energy availability in Arabidopsis

Plants use light as source of energy and information to detect diurnal rhythms and seasonal changes. Sensing changing light conditions is critical to adjust plant metabolism and to initiate developmental transitions. Here we analyzed transcriptome-wide alterations in gene expression and alternative splicing (AS) of etiolated seedlings undergoing photomorphogenesis upon exposure to blue, red, or white light. Our analysis revealed massive transcriptome reprograming as reflected by differential expression of ~20% of all genes and changes in several hundred AS events. For more than 60% of all regulated AS events, light promoted the production of a presumably protein-coding variant at the expense of an mRNA with nonsense-mediated decay-triggering features. Accordingly, AS of the putative splicing factor REDUCED RED-LIGHT RESPONSES IN CRY1CRY2 BACKGROUND 1 (RRC1), previously identified as a red light signaling component, was shifted to the functional variant under light. Downstream analyses of candidate AS events pointed at a role of photoreceptor signaling only in monochromatic but not in white light. Furthermore, we demonstrated similar AS changes upon light exposure and exogenous sugar supply, with a critical involvement of kinase signaling. We propose that AS is an integration point of signaling pathways that sense and transmit information regarding the energy availability in plants