Fresh hope in arthritis treatment search

They say locating the eight new genetic regions will help in understanding the inherited risks causing the disease.

Publishing their findings in The Lancet, the Arthritis Research UK-funded consortium said several of the areas encompassed genes known to regulate how joints are made and maintained.

Another contains a gene involved in the regulation of body weight, which is a major risk in causing the illness.

The £2.2m project is the world’s biggest ever genome study into osteoarthritis, comparing the genetic differences of 7,400 patients with severe osteoarthritis with 11,000 healthy volunteers.

Osteoarthritis affects around 40 per cent of people over the age of 70. It affects eight million people in the UK, causing pain and disability and has no cure.

Treatments for early stages of the illness are limited to non-surgical options such as painkillers and physiotherapy until joint replacement becomes an option.

It is estimated that about 50 per cent of an individual’s risk of developing osteoarthritis is due to inherited genetic factors.

Principal investigator Prof John Loughlin, of Newcastle University, said: “We know that osteoarthritis runs in families and that this is due to the genes that people pass on rather than their shared environment.

“In this study we were able to say with a high degree of confidence which genetic regions are the major risk factors for developing osteoarthritis – the first time that this has been possible for this common yet complex disease.”

Prof Alan Silman, medical director of the Chesterfield-based Arthritis Research UK, said: “Until we understand the cause of this complex disease, we cannot hope to find a cure. This is a major breakthrough in our understanding of osteoarthritis which we hope will help us to unlock the genetic basis of the disease.”