Reaching Consensus and Highlighting Future Directions for Research: The Osteoarthritis Summit Breakout Sessions

The major goal of the Summit was to foster discussion among the participants in an effort to reach consensus on important topics in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of osteoarthritis (OA) and to highlight future directions for research. To that end, long breakout sessions were held at the end of both days of the summit. Here, we provide a summary of the sessions. To focus the discussion, participants were challenged to develop answers to questions posed by the co-chairs (addressed below). Much of the discussion was also focused around a proposal from John Hardin of the Arthritis Foundation to develop a concentrated, multidisciplinary, multi-institutional effort centered on the stabilization of cartilage matrix after joint trauma. Applying candidate pharmacologic agents and detecting the resulting stabilization with new imaging and molecular biomarkers could be a way to achieve concrete progress in preventing OA (see John Hardin’s article elsewhere in this supplement).