Messier receives $6 million research grant
A $6 million federal grant, the largest ever awarded to Wake Forest, will enable health and exercise science researchers to further study knee osteoarthritis and successful treatment measures in community-based settings.
Wake Forest Heath and Exercise Science faculty involved in the IDEA study, Steve Messier (in white), Gary Miller, and Shannon Mihalko, in the Biomechanics laboratory in Reynolds Gym on Tuesday, September 24, 2013.
Health and exercise science professor Steve Messier and colleagues have spent 26 of the last 34 years at Wake Forest studying the effects of exercise and dietary restriction related to knee osteoarthritis (OA) through clinical trials research. This new grant will fund a study known as WE-CAN – Weight Loss and Exercise for Communities with Arthritis in North Carolina – that will put these years of highly-controlled clinical study results to the test in a real-world setting.
“Knee osteoarthritis is a leading cause of disability in older adults and there are over 250 million people in the world affected,” Messier said. “Our work has looked at effects of walking, strength training and weight loss on function and pain in OA under very controlled settings. We’ve decided to take what we’ve learned before and move it out in the community.”
Armed with the grant from the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), Messier and his team, which includes professor Gary Miller, a nutrition expert, and associate professor and health psychologist Shannon Mihalko, both of the Health and Exercise Science department, are conducting what’s known as a pragmatic clinical trial in which there are very few controls in order to simulate normal clinical conditions.
Categories: Faculty News
