UNRAVELING THE MOLECULAR-GENETICS OF OSTEOARTHROSIS

Osteoarthrosis (OA) is a major component of many osteochondrodysplasti c syndromes which follow mendelian modes of inheritance. The use of mo lecular genetic techniques to unravel the molecular background of OA h as therefore become possible. Linkage analysis, positional cloning, an d candidate gene analysis have been used to identify genes which, when altered, can lead to syndromic OA. Allele association studies and sib -pair analysis have also made it possible to study the importance of a particular gene or locus in OA at the population level. Furthermore, the creation of transgenic mice and analyses of naturally occurring an d chemically or radiologically induced mutations in mice are providing in vivo models for human osteochondrodysplasias and OA.