Steve Messier

Professor, Director of the J.B. Snow Biomechanics Laboratory

Worrell 2152
messier@wfu.edu
336.758.5849

Dr. Messier is Professor and Director of the J.B Snow Biomechanics Laboratory at Wake Forest University. He has been at Wake Forest for 42 years and has 32 years of experience in clinical trials research specifically related to knee osteoarthritis (OA). He has received the lifetime achievement award from the Osteoarthritis Research Society International (2022), the Borelli Award from the American Society of Biomechanics (2020) for outstanding career accomplishment through exemplary research in biomechanics, and the career achievement award from the American College of Sports Medicine Biomechanics Group (2009). He has published over 125 original manuscripts including 20 over the past 5 years. He and his OA research team are well known for their work on the effects of exercise and weight loss on gait, strength, function, and pain in knee OA.

Dr. Messier is currently the principal investigator of the multi-center The Osteoarthritis Prevention Study (TOPS). TOPS is a primary prevention intervention trial of dietary weight loss, exercise, and weight-loss maintenance for females (N = 1230) at risk for the development of knee osteoarthritis designed to reduce incident structural and symptomatic knee osteoarthritis.
He has been awarded $17.1 million by the National Institute of Arthritis and
Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, the Arthritis Foundation, the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention, and other sponsors to conduct TOPS.
Osteoarthritis is the leading cause of disability among adults worldwide
and the third most common diagnosis for hospital stays, at 1.25 million
per year. It affects nearly twice as many women as men, primarily
targeting the knees. It is incurable.
In prior research, Professor Messier found that for every pound lost, the
knee loses four pounds of stress. TOPS is the first clinical study to
examine whether the most common treatments for osteoarthritis –
weight loss and exercise – also prevent it.
Project manager Jovita Newman oversees operations at the Wake Forest coordinating center and three other intervention sites: Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the University of Sydney in Australia.
The 1,230 participating women will be randomly divided into a diet-and-guided-exercise treatment and a healthy-living treatment for the four-year study. Researchers will use MRI scans to evaluate degenerative changes in the knee at month 48 and other measures to track knee pain, mobility, and health-related quality of life.
Department of Health and Exercise Science Professor Gary Miller serves
as head nutritionist, and Professor Shannon Mihalko is the Wake Forest
site PI and behavioral psychologist. She aims to define methods to sustain weight-loss; very few studies look at the common problem of regaining weight and its long-term negative health consequences.

Previously, Dr. Messier was the co-principal investigator of the Fitness Arthritis in Seniors Trial (FAST), the principal investigator of the Arthritis Diet and Activity Promotion Trial (ADAPT), the Intensive Diet and Exercise for Arthritis (IDEA) study, the Strength Training for Arthritis Trial (START), and the Weight loss and Exercise for Communities with Arthritis in North Carolina (WE-CAN). WE-CAN was a pragmatic randomized clinical trial of 823 older adults with knee OA, and overweight and obesity that is designed to determine if the diet and exercise intervention implemented in a highly controlled efficacy trial (IDEA) could be successfully implemented in diverse community settings. These studies are funded with grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Arthritis Foundation, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. Messier was on the Board of Directors for the Osteoarthritis Research Society International (OARSI) from 2014-2018, the leading scientific organization devoted exclusively to osteoarthritis. He is the past chair of the OARSI Fiscal Committee. He is an associate editor of Arthritis and Rheumatology, the official journal of the American College of Rheumatology.

Messier Biosketch