Genetic Study Reveals Possible New Routes To Treating Osteoarthritis

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In the largest genetic study of osteoarthritis, an international team of scientists including researchers from the University of Sheffield, have uncovered 52 new genetic changes linked to the disease, which doubles the number of genetic regions associated with the disabling condition.

Scientists at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, GSK and their collaborators – including Mark Wilkinson, Professor of Orthopaedics at the University of Sheffield – analysed the genomes of over 77,000 people with osteoarthritis.

Their findings, published in the journal Nature Genetics, revealed new genes and biological pathways linked to osteoarthritis, which could help identify starting points for new medicines. Researchers also highlighted opportunities for existing medicines to be evaluated in osteoarthritis.

Almost ten million people in the UK suffer from osteoarthritis, a degenerative joint disease in which a person’s joints become damaged, stop moving freely and become painful. There is no disease-modifying treatment for osteoarthritis. The disease is managed with pain relief medications and often culminates in joint replacement surgery, which has variable outcomes.

Professor Wilkinson from the University’s Department of Oncology and Metabolism and Honorary Consultant Orthopedic Surgeon at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said, “Osteoarthritis is the leading cause of chronic disability worldwide and this study rep resents the largest genetic epidemiological study to date in our attempts to understand what makes one person more likely to develop the disease than another.

“As well as looking at inherited factors that underpin disease susceptibility, we also looked at how genes link together to form pathways that underpin disease biology.