Numerous studies have demonstrated the efficacy of NEC1 in mitigating various in vivo and in vitro disease models, including osteoarthritis (Cao and Mu, 2021), and NEC1 has also been reported to treat TMJ-OA (He et al., 2022), which is consistent with our study that NEC1 effectively attenuates the progression of TMJ-OA in both in vitro and in vivo models. This evidence concerns the gene PCSK1 and osteoarthritis.