Knee osteoarthritis lumbar-disc degeneration and developmental dysplasia of the hip - an emerging genetic overlap Open Access

Description: Genetics highlights relationships between biological systems, and as the number of defi ned osteoarthritis susceptibility alleles increases, there is the natural tendency to assess whether the alleles infl uence other musculoskeletal phenotypes. That has proven to be the case for the GDF5 polymorphism rs143383, a risk factor for knee osteoarthritis and several other common conditions, including lumbar-disc degeneration and developmental dysplasia of the hip. Another interesting example has recently emerged in the repeat polymorphism of the asporin gene, ASPN, which is also associated with these three phenotypes. Such discoveries increase our understanding of shared disease etiology but also emphasize the complexity of common genetic risk.
Knee osteoarthritis, lumbar-disc degeneration and developmental dysplasia of the hip - an emerging genetic overlap Loughlin J Arthritis Research & Therapy 2011, 13:108 (full text) Editorial