Greater medial proximal tibial slope is associated with bone marrow lesions in middle-aged women with early knee osteoarthritis.

"Declarations Ethics approval and consent to participateAll procedures involving human participants performed in this study were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Hirosaki University (reference numbers: 2017-026 and 2019-009). Consent for publicationInformed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. Competing interestsThe authors declare that they have no competing interests. Competing interests The authors declare that they have no competing interests."

"Funding This study was supported in part by JST COI grant number JPMJCE1302, JPMJCA2201, JPMJPF2210, a grant-in-aid from the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (nos. 21500676, 18K16606, 18K09091 and 22K10522), the Health Labor Sciences research grant, a JOA-Subsidized Science Project Research from the Japanese Orthopedic Association (2018-4), and a grant from the Japan Orthopedics and Traumatology Research Foundation (no. 421)."