World Arthritis Week - Research Spotlight

In honour of #WorldArthritisDay this week we have looked at the amazing research into immune-mediated arthritis, but we also wanted to talk about research into Osteoarthritis. Osteoarthritis is the most common type of arthritis, affecting around 8.5 million people in the UK.

Before our Centre Manager, Dr Emma Raine, came to work at the BioResource, she was a researcher in Musculoskeletal genetics. Here she is to talk about her research.

In a healthy joint, cartilage covers the surface of the bones and helps them move freely against each other. When a joint develops osteoarthritis, part of the cartilage thins, and the surface becomes rougher. This means the joint doesn’t move as smoothly as it should.

The body tries to repair this damage, but this can sometimes lead to pain, swelling which leads to difficulty in moving the joint normally.

It has long been known that changes in our DNA code can affect our likelihood of getting osteoarthritis. My research was looking into some of these changes.

Patients undergoing hip or knee replacements within the Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, very generously donated their damaged joints so that researchers in the University could gain insight into what causes some people to develop osteoarthritis.

I looked into the DNA code of hundreds of these joints, performing genotyping. The genes I looked at all carried the code for important proteins that the cartilage and other parts of the joint were made of. I measured the amount of protein and compared this to the genotype. I found that in lots of cases, people with certain changes in their code showed lower levels of protein.

These lower levels of protein in the joints were likely to be the reason that the cartilage had worn down quicker, so we were able to say that certain DNA changes predisposed people to developing Osteoarthritis.