The increased ACL injury
risk coupled with increased sports participation by young
women over the past 30 years (9-fold increase in high
school37 and 5-fold increase in collegiate sports36) have
increased public awareness and fueled many gender-specific
mechanistic and interventional investigations. This significant
problem is associated with a large health care cost, in
the range of $625 million annually, in addition to increased
potential for loss of entire seasons of sports participation,
loss of possible scholarship funding, lowered academic performance,
long-term disability, and up to 100 times greater
risk of radiographically diagnosed osteoarthritis