Does running wear out your cartilage?

Recent research looking at knee cartilage thickness after running shows that healthy cartilage seems to recover quickly from a run and returns to its normal thickness within 24 to 48 hours. This sugggests that there is no "wear and tear" effect on healthy knee cartilage resulting from running.

Whether this is also true for those who already have osteoarthritis remains to be seen. It appears that arthritic cartilage may take longer to recover from the effects of running than healthy cartilage.