Is osteoarthritis a genetic disease?

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a common, disabling condition of diarthrodial joints. For over 60 years there has been evidence that inherited factors are important in its etiology. The research to identify these genetic factors has been driven by the need to establish markers of disease onset and progression to help clinical management and by the need to discover new disease targets for drug design. Both candidate gene studies and genome wide scanning have been undertaken and have provided some important initial results, which are considered in this review. How the research to identify OA susceptibility genes will progress and the use of new technologies to facilitate this are discussed.