Not necessarily a sign of age: calcium crystals trigger inflammation and wear and tear in tendons and joints

Calcifications in the body are typically considered an age-related phenomenon. These calcifications can occur, for example, in the brain or in the cardiovascular system, resulting in arteriosclerosis, which means a hardening of the blood vessels.
Although not necessarily life-threatening, calcium crystals are also deposited in cartilage and tendons much more frequently than previously assumed, which is colloquially referred to as calcification. The consequences are chronic inflammations, e.g. of the shoulder or hip, often accompanied by bursitis.

Calcification & Osteoarthritis

But it also leads to wear and tear of cartilage and thus to osteoarthritis, e.g. in the knee joint. A study in Germany found that in almost all cases of advanced arthrosis there are large calcium deposits in the cartilage.
These are so small that they are not necessarily visible in X-rays and thus no one notices them. Calcifications are also very poorly detected in magnetic resonance imaging, which is otherwise very informative.
What many people do not know is that this calcification is not simply an age-related deposit. Rather, calcification is caused by active enzymatic and metabolic mechanisms, partly also genetically determined. Tendons and cartilage that are naturally exposed to strong mechanical stress, e.g. knee or shoulder joints, are affected.
There are different forms of calcium deposits. The most common are calcium apatite and calcium pyrophosphate, the so-called chondrocalcinosis.

What can I do about it?

Risk factors for this can be too much iron in the body, too little magnesium in the blood or a disorder of the parathyroid glands. Increased cholesterol levels also lead to increased calcification. Unfortunately, there are currently no easy ways to decalcify the tissue. Although there are medicines for calcifications, for example in the fingers based on sulphur, they cannot yet be used systemically.
However, inflammation caused by the crystals can be treated with various anti-inflammatory drugs, e.g. colchicine, which is also used to treat gout crystals. New drugs like the so-called anti-IL1 blockers may have an even better effect here. They have been tested in vascular calcification and it was discovered by chance that people treated in this way needed half as many joint replacements. Ongoing studies are currently investigating whether this drug can also be injected into the joint in combination with cartilage-building agents.