Sita Bierma-Zeinstra

• professor, PhD
• Professor (Full) at Erasmus MC

Objective No established definition for early-stage knee osteoarthritis (KOA) is available, nor classification criteria. Identifying the characteristics of individuals presenting with early-stage KOA symptoms can enhance diagnosis to prevent progression. This study aimed to describe clinical and structural features of individuals presenting with kn...

Background The incidence of different types of hand and wrist disorders in primary care is unknown since there are no specific encodings for it. Aims To determine the overall incidence and the incidence of specific types of hand and wrist disorders in primary care. Design & setting A healthcare registration database from Dutch general practice, w...

Objective: Metabolic osteoarthritis (OA) is one of the proposed clinical phenotypes defined by the existence of metabolic syndrome (MetS). This study aimed to (1) investigate whether MetS and its components are associated with progression of knee OA MRI features, and (2) to evaluate the interaction of MetS with menopause and progression of MRI fea...

Background Plantar heel pain (PHP) is a common cause of foot complaints, for which treatment with custom-made insoles is frequently applied. So far few studies have investigated patient characteristics that predict response to these treatments. The aim of this secondary exploratory analysis was twofold; firstly, to identify patient characteristics...

The SARS-CoV-2 Omicron (B.1.1.529) variant has been associated with less severe acute disease, however, concerns remain as to whether long-term complaints persist to a similar extent as for earlier variants. Studying 1 323 145 persons aged 18-70 years living in Norway with and without SARS-CoV-2 infection in a prospective cohort study, we found tha...

Background: A wide range of response strategies have been implemented by different countries to slow the spread of the COVID-19 outbreak. While the effects of these strategies in the general population have been investigated, less is known about the effects of these strategies on those with pre-existing comorbid conditions including rheumatic and m...

Background: The diagnosis of hip osteoarthritis (OA) is often based on clinical symptoms, such as pain and stiffness, and radiographic features. However, the association between hip pain and hip radiographic OA (ROA) remains uncertain. Aim: To examine the association between hip pain and hip ROA. Design and setting: Cross-sectional analysis of...

INTRODUCTION Postmenopausal status is one of the known OA risk factors. Decreased estrogen levels in postmenopausal women could alter the integrity of the menisci, leading to weakening of the meniscal matrix, followed by meniscal extrusion and subsequent OA development. OBJECTIVES To evaluate the association between postmenopausal status and menis...

Objective To estimate the risk of developing comorbidities in patients after physician‐diagnosed knee or hip osteoarthritis (OA). Methods This was a cohort study using Swedish longitudinal health care register data; we studied residents in the Skåne region age ≥35 years on January 1, 2010 who were free from diagnosed hip or knee OA (n = 548,681)....

Background Patellofemoral OA is a strong risk factor for progression to generalized whole knee OA, but it is unknown whether involvement of the patellofemoral joint in early radiographic OA (ROA) is associated with risk of undergoing future knee arthroplasty. This is clinically relevant because patellofemoral OA likely requires a different treatmen...

Background: Osteoarthritis (OA) is a common and disabling disease that places a significant burden on both patients and health care systems. Previous studies have already shown that patients with OA have a higher risk of developing comorbidities. However, many focused on one or a few conditions only, or did not consider the chronology of the diseas...

Background: Osteoarthritis (OA) patients are more likely to have other comorbidities (Swain, Sarmanova et al. 2020). Improving the understanding of comorbidity profiles of OA patients may lead to improvement in their clinical care. Objectives: To identify sub-groups in patients diagnosed with hip OA using patterns of comorbidity. Methods: Routinely...

Background: People with osteoarthritis (OA) are at higher risk of developing a wide array of comorbidities. Whether the use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) contributes to the increased risk of some incident comorbidities remains unknown. Objectives: To examine the contribution of NSAIDs in the development of a wide range of comorb...

Objective To examine whether persons infected with the SARS-CoV-2 omicron variant have an altered risk of post-covid complaints and healthcare use when compared to 1) persons testing negative, and 2) persons with delta. Design Prospective cohort study with 126 days follow-up and a time-to-event approach. Setting A registry-based study including N...

Musculoskeletal complaints (MSCs) arise during nursing education. We examined cross-sectional associations between self-reported MSCs and both sociodemographic and workplace characteristics in different clinical placement settings. We included two observations among three cohorts of third-year Dutch nursing students (total N = 711) of the undergrad...

Aim To study the risk of receiving a new (incident) osteoarthritis (OA) diagnosis in different joint sites based on conditions diagnosed in the 20 years prior the OA diagnosis. Methods We used register data for the entire population of the Skåne region (Sweden) to perform a nested case-control study. The outcome was newly diagnosed (incident) OA i...

Objective The Cohort Hip and Cohort Knee (CHECK) is a cohort of middle‐aged individuals with hip or knee pain. Radiographs were assigned Kellgren/Lawrence (K/L) scores under different conditions at each follow‐up visit for 10 years. We aimed to describe and consolidate each scoring approach, then illustrate implications of their use by comparing ba...

Introduction Osteoarthritis (OA) is one of the leading chronic conditions in the older population. People with OA are more likely to have one or more other chronic conditions than those without. However, the temporal associations, clusters of the comorbidities, role of analgesics and the causality and variation between populations are yet to be in...

Background: Cam morphology contributes to the development of hip osteoarthritis (OA) but is less studied in the general population. This study describes its associations with clinical and imaging features of hip OA. Methods: Anteroposterior hip radiographs of 1019 participants from the Tasmanian Older Adult Cohort (TASOAC) were scored at baselin...

Objective To investigate whether the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic impacted healthcare consultations (HCC) and hospitalization among people with and without osteoarthritis (OA). Methods Using register data, we included individuals aged ≥35 years residing in Skåne region, Sweden, during 2009–2019 with (n = 123,523) and without (n = 552,412) a...

Objectives To investigate the role of osteoarthritis (OA) in the incidence of musculoskeletal, metabolic, cardiovascular, digestive, neuro-psychological, kidney and other comorbidities/adverse events after (i) incident non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) initiation and (ii) NSAID discontinuation. Methods We used register data for the popu...

Background Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) rupture is a very common knee injury in the sport active population. There is much debate on which treatment (operative or non-operative) is best for the individual patient. In order to give a more personalized recommendation we aim to evaluate the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of a treatment algor...

Objectives: In Phase 1 of developing new hand osteoarthritis (OA) classification criteria, features associated with hand OA were identified in a population with hand complaints. Radiographic findings could better discriminate patients with hand OA and controls than clinical examination findings. The objective of Phase 2 was to achieve consensus on...

Objective: To describe the prevalence, incidence, and progression of radiographic thumb carpometacarpal (CMC-1) and trapezioscaphoid (TS) radiographic osteoarthritis (ROA) in the general Dutch population aged ≥55y. Design: Data were from the first and second cohort of the Rotterdam Study (1990-2005, 4-12 years follow-up, age 55+). Participants unde...

Introduction There is a lack of effective non-surgical interventions for ankle osteoarthritis. Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injections are widely used and reported to be beneficial for knee osteoarthritis. We evaluated the efficacy of PRP injections in the management of ankle osteoarthritis. Materials and Methods In this six-center stratified, block...

Purpose To investigate the impact of COVID-19 in Sweden on rates of knee and hip surgeries. Methods We used healthcare data for the population of the southernmost region in Sweden (1.4 million inhabitants). We did an interrupted time-series analysis to estimate changes in rates and trends of joint replacements (JR), arthroscopies, and fracture sur...

Background: Osgood-Schlatter disease (OSD) is a non-traumatic knee problem that primarily observed in sports active children and adolescents between the age of 8 and 15. Aim: The objective of this study was to determine the incidence of OSD and to gain insight into the management of children and adolescents with OSD in general practice. Design...

Background Ankle injuries are common injuries among pre-professional dancers. An overview of the incidence and risk factors is however lacking. Objective To examine the incidence and risk factors of ankle injuries among contemporary pre-professional dancers. Design Prospective cohort study. Setting Codarts University of the Arts, Rotterdam, The...

Background The INSPIRE trial examined in 2017 the effect of an online injury prevention program on the number of running-related injuries (RRI). Although this program showed no effect on the number of injuries, new insights from this study were used to design an enhanced prevention program. Objective To examine the effectiveness of an online injur...

Background Ankle sprains are one of the most frequent injuries of the musculoskeletal system. No optimal treatment strategy has proven to be effective in general practice, however promising results were achieved in a preventive trial among athletes Objective To examine the effectiveness of an unsupervised e-health supported neuromuscular training...

Introduction: There is lack of understanding of the relationship between knee adduction moment (KAM) reductions and improvements in pain or function in patients with knee osteoarthritis (KOA). Moreover, there is no systematic review describing the longitudinal relationship between KAM changes and subsequent changes in pain and/or physical function...

Prevention is an attractive solution for the staggering and increasingly unmanageable burden of osteoarthritis. Despite this, the field of osteoarthritis prevention is relatively immature. To date, most of what is known about preventing osteoarthritis and risk factors for osteoarthritis is relative to the disease (underlying biology and pathophysio...

Plantaire hielpijn is een veelvoorkomende voetklacht met veel impact. Er zijn verschillende interventies mogelijk, waaronder op maat gemaakte inlegzolen. Die laatste zijn duur (100-150 euro) en er is geen evidence voor. In dit gerandomiseerde gecontroleerde onderzoek met 185 deelnemers bleek dat een op maat gemaakte zool in eerste instantie geen to...

Objectives Vitamin K is hypothesised to play a role in osteoarthritis (OA) pathogenesis through effects on vitamin K-dependent bone and cartilage proteins, and therefore may represent a modifiable risk factor. A genetic variant in a vitamin K-dependent protein that is an essential inhibitor for cartilage calcification, matrix Gla protein (MGP), was...

Corrigendum to: “Effective interventions for preventing work related physical health complaints in nursing students and novice nurses: A systematic review” [Nurse Educ. Pract. 44 (2020)102772] Jos H.A.M. Kox a,b,*, Ellen J.M. Bakker a,c, Sita Bierma-Zeinstra b,d, Jos Runhaar b, Harald S. Miedema a, Pepijn D.D.M. Roelofs a,b a Rotterdam University...

Purpose: Osteoarthritis (OA) as a late-onset disease presents a considerable burden on ageing societies, with over 300 million people affected diagnosed worldwide. Osteoarthritis is a complex degenerative disease with an estimated genetic component of ∼50%. Risk prediction for OA typically includes clinical and environmental factors, but genetic fa...

Objectives Our aim was to assess the ability of semi-automatically extracted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)–based radiomic features from tibial subchondral bone to distinguish between knees without and with osteoarthritis. Methods The right knees of 665 females from the population-based Rotterdam Study scanned with 1.5T MRI were analyzed. A fast...

Objectives To conduct a cost-utility analysis for two commonly used treatment strategies for patients after ACL rupture; early ACL reconstruction (index) versus rehabilitation plus an optional reconstruction in case of persistent instability (comparator). Methods Patients aged between 18 and 65 years of age with a recent ACL rupture (<2 months) we...

Objective To assess whether a clinically relevant difference exists in patients’ perceptions of symptoms, knee function, and ability to participate in sports over a period of two years after rupture of the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) between two commonly used treatment regimens. Design Open labelled, multicentre, parallel randomised controlle...

Fysieke gezondheidsklachten ten gevolge van de fysieke belasting tijdens stage of werk beginnen al bij verpleegkundestudenten. Het is van belang dit al in een vroeg stadium aan te pakken. Maar welke wetenschappelijk onderbouwde interventies zijn er beschikbaar en in hoeverre zijn deze effectief? Dat is de vraag waarin dit artikel beoogt meer inzich...

Objective To identify distinct recovery trajectories of acute flares of knee pain and associated participant characteristics. Methods Data were from the FLARE randomized controlled trial, a multicenter trial in 27 primary care centers in the UK and Netherlands of 3 regimes of oral nonsteroidal antiinflammatory therapy for acute flares of knee pain...

Background Acetabular dysplasia is an important pre-disposing factor for osteoarthritis of the hip. However, it is not completely known how acetabular dysplasia develops during childhood. Objective To study the prevalence of acetabular dysplasia and its association with body mass index (BMI) and physical activity in 9 year old children. Design Th...

Objective: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the added value of radiographs for diagnosing knee osteoarthritis (KOA) by general practitioners (GPs) and secondary care physicians (SPs). Methods: Seventeen GPs and nineteen SPs were recruited to evaluate 1185 knees from the CHECK cohort (presenters with knee pain in primary care) for the pr...

Objective To assess the association between meniscal volume, its change over time and the development of knee OA after 30 months in overweight/obese women. Methods Data from the PRevention of knee Osteoarthritis in Overweight Females study were used. This cohort included 407 women with a BMI ≥ 27 kg/m2, free of OA-related symptoms. The primary out...

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a chronic, disabling, and common disease. Nonpharmacological and nonsurgical treatments are seen as the core treatments for OA. This paper presents an overview of the recommendations from international guidelines on nonpharmacological and nonsurgical interventions. Education, advice, or information about the etiology, progres...

Objective Examine the associations of training volume and longest endurance run with (half‐)marathon performance and running‐related injuries (RRIs) in recreational runners. Materials and Methods During the preparation for and directly after the running event, 556 participants of a half‐marathon and 441 participants of a marathon completed three q...

Background Despite the wide range of treatment options for knee and hip osteoarthritis (KHOA), suboptimal care, low uptake and low adherence to treatment is widely seen. We need to gain insight into preferences for KHOA treatment. Aim To determine patients’, healthcare providers’ and healthcare insurance employees’ preferences for existing health...

Objectives Further knowledge about typical hand osteoarthritis (OA) characteristics is needed for the development of new classification criteria for hand OA. Methods In a cross-sectional multi-centre international study, a convenience sample of patients from primary and secondary/tertiary care with a physician-based hand OA diagnosis (n = 128) wer...

Background: The knee is symptomatically the most frequent affected joint in osteoarthritis and, in the Netherlands and other Western countries, is mainly managed by general practitioners (GPs). An intra-articular glucocorticoid injection is recommended in (inter) national guidelines for patients with knee osteoarthritis as an option for a flare of...

Objectives. To identify predictors of the specific (difference between treatment and placebo) and overall (change from baseline in treatment arm) treatment effects of topical NSAIDs in OA. Methods. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of topical NSAIDs in OA were identified through systematic literature searching and inquiry to pharmaceutical compan...

Purpose The purpose of this study was to evaluate the added value of radiographs above clinical findings for diagnosing knee osteoarthritis (OA) by general practitioners (GP) and secondary care physicians (SP). Methods Standardized clinical and radiographic data of 761 individuals with 1185 symptomatic knees from the CHECK cohort (a longitudinal c...

Introduction Observational data suggest that vitamin D deficiency is associated with the onset and progression of knee osteoarthritis (OA). However, randomised controlled trials (RCTs) to date investigating the efficacy of vitamin D supplementation in knee OA have reported conflicting results. Further research is needed to clarify the effects of vi...

Study design: Systematic review and meta-analysis. Objective: To provide an overview of the prevalence of reported musculoskeletal abnormalities on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the pediatric spine. Summary of background data: Back pain is a common complaint and significant health issue, already in children. Several studies have investig...

Background: The concept of osteoarthritis (OA) heterogeneity is evolving and gaining renewed interest. According to this concept, distinct subtypes of OA need to be defined that will likely require recognition in research design and different approaches to clinical management. Although seemingly plausible, a wide range of views exist on how best t...

Background: Patellofemoral pain (PFP) patients show increased prevalence of patellar malalignment. Structural and alignment abnormalities of the patellofemoral joint (PFJ) may play a role in development of PFP and patellofemoral osteoarthritis (PFOA). Objectives: Evaluating associations of patellofemoral alignment and femoral geometry with bony...