Genetics and Arthritis

In class someone mentioned if there were genetic predispositions involved in arthritis, and I was curious to find more information about that. I found an article that did a study about this topic. They found that genetic susceptibility is caused by many factors. The article said, “it involves several polymorphic genes, perhaps each contributing with a small increment.” Since we also looked at NOS, it was interested that part of their results was that they found out the NOS2 gene promoter polymorphisms don’t have a huge effect on RA predisposition. It also mentioned that there should be more research done to look into the CTTT alleles. The articles also said, “In addition, the reported genetic heterogeneity within and between ethnic groups in the highly polymorphic promoter (CCTTT)n repeat13 raises the possibility that a (CCTTT)n allele might be associated with the disease in a different population.” This goes along with the issue brought about in class about the disease being associated in different populations or ethnic groups like Italians. (http://www.nature.com/gene/journal/v3/n5/full/6363856a.html) I also found a general website that had information about arthritis and I found a section entitled, “Issues of Genetics and Arthritis”. It mentioned that there are more studies that are looking at the genetics involved in arthritis. It mentioned that in Britain there has been a discovery of knee osteoarthritis that is now added to the group, genetically caused arthritis. They found that brothers are more likely to get the disease than sisters, which is surprising since females are more susceptible than males. Once again, there still needs to be more research and the article mentioned that another group in California is looking into this study in order to find out more information about genetics and arthritis. (http://www.creakyjoints.com/go/article0062.shtml)Therefore, there are genetic predispositions involved, but to determine more information about it and find more types of arthritis that have a genetic predisposition there has to be more research conducted.