Periprosthetic joint infection (PJI) is a devastating complication of knee and hip replacement surgery that can, in some cases, be difficult to distinguish from other causes of arthroplasty failure. An 'omics'-based tool that measures predicted abundance of immune cells may aid in making the diagnosis of failed arthroplasty due to PJI, suggests a study in The Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery.
CIBERSORTx cellularity prediction from sonicate fluid, comparing subjects in the PJIF group and the NIAF group. NK=natural killer, DC=dendritic cell, and Tfhs=T follicular helper cells. Fig. A Overall analysis of predicted relative proportion of each of the 22 cellular fractions, shown as individual samples and averaged . Fig. B Difference in the predicted cellular proportion between the samples from PJIF and NIAF cases. Asterisks indicate fractions with p values of ≤0.
Testing was performed on sonicate fluid samples, obtained using an ultrasound technique refined by Dr. Patel and her team that samples surfaces of surgically removed implants. According to Dr. Patel,"Sonicate fluid provides a direct interrogation of implant surfaces and therefore provides an ideal sample type for investigation of key immune responses during arthroplasty failure."