Reply to letter by Deng et al. "Could the levels of inflammation biomarkers predict OA? Comment on the article by Roemer FW et al."

As explained in the methods-section, we chose to analyze the 2-year data in regard to inflammatory activity based on MRI and synovial biomarkers (and not earlier time points) as our aim was to capture patients that experienced "prolonged" or chronic inflammation, which may be regarded as a potential risk factor for osteoarthritis (OA) development. Virtually all patients of an acute injury cohort (like the KANON patients) will exhibit acute post-traumatic inflammation in their injured knee to a various extent as manifested by marked changes on imaging (i.e. effusion, traumatic synovitis and haemarthrosis) or in biochemical parameters. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.