PostedMay 13, 2022, 8:36 p.m.
A doctor and a teacher were awarded for their discovery of the relationship between joint disease and adipose tissue.
The two winners of the Prize is led by Dr. Jeroen Geurts (left), from the CHUV and Prof. Bart Deplancke (right), EPFL, are the winners of the 2022 Leenaards Prize for Translational Biomedical Research.
© Alain Herzog
To stimulate biomedical research, the Leenaards Foundation awards a prize each year for a project that includes collaboration between researchers from at least two institutions or academic hospitals in the Lake Geneva region.
This year’s winners are known. This is Dr. Jeroen GeurtsCHUV, and Pr Bart Deplancke, from EPFL. The selected project makes a link between joint diseases and adipose tissue in overweight people. He received an endowment of 750,000 francs. “Contrary to what has long been presupposed, it would not be the mechanical stress on the cartilaginous and bone structures, due to overweight, which would explain the link between obesity and osteoarthritis, but rather the role of the fatty tissue of the bone marrow” , explained the two winners.
According to Professor Bart Deplancke, “the body’s difficulty in destroying lipids to extract energy from them in obese people would also affect bones and cartilage”. For Dr. Jeroen Geurts, “it’s as if the body responded to the excessive storage of fat by very important bone formation. The cartilage then loses its flexibility by gradually ossifying, which leads to very painful friction and inflammation in people with osteoarthritis. Pain that might be reduced thanks to this discovery which will bring “new therapeutic targets in the treatment of osteoarthritis”.
A week ago, the WHO issued the alert: obesity has become epidemic in Europe. About 59% of adults and nearly one in three children are overweight. Obesity is the cause of 13% of annual deaths in Europe. As for osteoarthritis, it is the cause of 20% of consultations for chronic pain. With the increase in life expectancy and overweight of the population, the two diseases are increasingly associated.
(apn)
