{"doi":"10.1126/sciadv.aaz7492","title":"Gene therapy for follistatin mitigates systemic metabolic inflammation and post-traumatic arthritis in high-fat diet–induced obesity","abstract":"Obesity-associated inflammation and loss of muscle function play critical roles in the development of osteoarthritis (OA); thus, therapies that target muscle tissue may provide novel approaches to restoring metabolic and biomechanical dysfunction associated with obesity. Follistatin (FST), a protein that binds myostatin and activin, may have the potential to enhance muscle formation while inhibiting inflammation. Here, we hypothesized that adeno-associated virus 9 (AAV9) delivery of FST enhances muscle formation and mitigates metabolic inflammation and knee OA caused by a high-fat diet in mice. AAV-mediated FST delivery exhibited decreased obesity-induced inflammatory adipokines and cytokines systemically and in the joint synovial fluid. Regardless of diet, mice receiving FST gene therapy were protected from post-traumatic OA and bone remodeling induced by joint injury. Together, these findings suggest that FST gene therapy may provide a multifactorial therapeutic approach for injury-induced OA and metabolic inflammation in obesity.","journal":"Science Advances","year":2020,"id":58820,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":70,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9477,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":232642,"name":"Natalia S. Harasymowicz","orcid":"0000-0002-2140-4157","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":308626,"name":"Chia‐Lung Wu","orcid":"0000-0001-9598-7036","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":232644,"name":"Kelsey H. Collins","orcid":"0000-0001-7348-7348","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":245888,"name":"Yun‐Rak Choi","orcid":"0000-0001-5197-3716","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":308627,"name":"Sara J. Oswald","orcid":"0000-0002-5292-2117","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":232645,"name":"Farshid Guilak","orcid":"0000-0001-7380-0330","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":245887,"name":"Ruhang Tang","orcid":"0000-0003-4918-3525","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":46,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T21:07:33.416320Z","pmid":"32426485","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}