The genetics of osteoarthritis

The study of the etiology of osteoarthritis (OA) is distinguished by a long-standing consideration of the disease as an inherited disorder. Until the last decade, the study of OA as a genetic disease was limited to anecdotal reports of families in which specific OA traits were clustered. The impetus to further explore the genetics of OA has come from our increasing understanding of the nature of complex genetic disease in which disease traits need not be inherited in a Mendelian manner. This review will acquaint the reader with the impressive and fast-paced progress that has been made, especially in the post decade, regarding the study of OA as a heritable disease. While this review is not meant to be an exhaustive compendium of every published study, it will familiarize the reader with some of the highlights of OA genetics, as well as illustrate the range and depth of effort needed to unravel of genetics of complex diseases, such as OA.