Paula Hernandez, Ph.D. , an assistant professor in Orthopedic Surgery and Biomedical Engineering, discusses her research on the impact of sports injuries on knee osteoarthritis in women, focusing on the role of sex hormones. She highlights the increased risk of knee osteoarthritis in female athletes due to ACL and meniscal tears, and emphasizes the need for more research in women's health. Her lab combines expertise from orthopedic surgery and biomedical engineering to understand how cells in joints react to movement and how sex hormones affect joint sensation.
Learn more and link to Dr. Hernandez' lab
Young women right now playing sports and getting injured, that osteoarthritis develops in a later in life. It takes years to develop. So we're gonna have an epidemic of knee osteoarthritis down the road if we don't stop the process now. My name is Paula Hernandez. I'm an assistant professor in the department of Orthopedic Surgery and biomedical Engineering, and this is a day in my lab. I study how the cells that are inside our joints, like specifically in articular cartilage, uh, react to how we move, like mechanical stimulation. When you do sports, when you run, when you walk. Uh, and I want to understand how the fact of being a female versus a male, and also how the sex hormones like estrogen, progesterone, testosterone affect that sensation of the joints to the movement. Women's health is Need for information, for research. Uh, women have a higher risk of developing knee os arthritis that can happen both when you're getting older and your hormones are going down in your system and also when you're younger, especially now that we have so many female, uh, athletes playing soccer, uh, they have so many ACL tears, meniscal tears, and that has a higher risk of developing Neo's arthritis. Later in life. So, understanding how being a female affects your joints and how your own hormones can help you, uh, it's an advancement in women's health. In my lab, a typical day, there's a lot of moving parts. My team, uh, does a lot of experiments. They do all the experimental part, and we meet once a week to plan what's been going on, where are the next steps, and uh where are we going next. The beauty of being associated to both departments is that in orthopedic surgery, you work with surgeons that are experts in the joints, and in biomedical engineering, you work with people that are experts in developing tools to understand how cells. Can make kind of sense. Um, so there's a perfect combination and collaboration there. Uh, it's been my dream for all my life, trying to understand how diseases work, finding cures, uh, working with others and collaborating, and this is a dream come true to me.
