Marco van Basten’s case is puzzling: why does a healthy, active teenager end up with a lasting disability from ankle osteoarthritis just a few years after a simple ankle sprain? To prevent this from happening again, we are developing a new tool that can measure whether there is damage to the ankle and how severe it is immediately after the injury. In a large-scale study, we want to find out if this damage gets worse, leading to osteoarthritis. With this tool and what we learn, we hope to be able to treat osteoarthritis before it reaches the point of no return.
