Sometimes a big medical problem requires a massive research effort. Scientists have done just that for osteoarthritis, a condition that could affect a billion people globally by 2050.
Their enormous effort could help identify existing drugs suitable to treat arthritis, develop new ones specifically targeted to the disease, and, eventually create tailored approaches based on an individual arthritis sufferer’s genetic makeup. These three approaches are essentially at different heights on the drug development tree.
Just how large was the study? For starters, scientists examined the genomes of 489,975 osteoarthritis patients and compared them to the genomes of 1,472,094 people living without the condition. In doing so, they found 962 genetic associations, 513 of which have not been previously reported. When the data dust settled, the scientists felt fairly confident that they had identified about 700 genes that contribute to osteoarthritis, the scientists report in the journal Nature.
Although such numbers ...
