Table 7.

Correlation of biomarkers with the age of healthy individuals and patients with EOA and LOA

Biomarkers	Healthy		EOA		LOA
					Total		Mild		Severe
	r	p	r	p	r	p	r	p	r	p
COMP	0.349	< 0.05	0.379	< 0.05	0.218	< 0.05	0.187	> 0.05	0.206	< 0.05
HA	0.230	> 0.05	0.295	> 0.05	0.268	< 0.01	0.427	< 0.05	0.187	> 0.05
PIICP	0.026	> 0.05	0.122	> 0.05	0.058	> 0.05	0.138	> 0.05	−0.012	> 0.05

EOA Early Osteoarthritis, LOA Late Osteoarthritis

Correlation analysis between biomarker levels and age of the participants was performed using Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient (r). All reported p-values are two-tailed. p-values < 0.05 were considered statistically significant and indicated in bold