Liraglutide Trial Substudy to Investigate MRI and CT Changes in Obese Knee Osteoarthritis Patients

Obesity is a major risk factor for the development and progression of knee osteoarthritis (OA), a debilitating joint disease characterized by cartilage degradation and chronic pain. Current treatments often involve pain management and lifestyle modifications, including weight loss, but objective measures of joint structural changes linked to weight reduction are often lacking. Understanding how weight loss impacts joint health at a structural level, particularly before pharmacological interventions, could refine treatment strategies and identify patients most likely to benefit from specific approaches. This substudy aims to bridge this gap by using advanced imaging to quantify these changes.

This is a substudy to a randomized controlled trial (NCT02905864) investigating the effect of liraglutide 3 mg on body weight and pain in overweight or obese patients with knee osteoarthritis. In the parent trial, participants undergo an initial 8-week diet intervention phase, including a low-calorie diet and dietetic counseling. Following this, patients are randomized to receive either liraglutide 3 mg or placebo as an add-on to continued dietetic guidance. This substudy specifically aims to investigate changes in knee joint structures using multi-parametric MRI and CT scans associated with the initial 8-week weight loss intervention, and to evaluate the predictive value of CT scans for the effects of weight loss.

This record describes the protocol for a substudy and does not present any findings or results. The research is designed to investigate potential changes in knee joint structures, as measured by MRI and CT scans, following an 8-week weight loss intervention in obese patients with osteoarthritis. The primary objective is to quantify these imaging changes and assess the utility of CT scans in predicting the efficacy of weight loss on joint health. As this is a study design description, no specific data, percentages, p-values, or fold-changes are available at this stage. The study aims to generate these data in the future to inform the understanding of structural responses to weight loss in this patient population. Therefore, no key results can be extracted or highlighted at this time.