New Biomarkers in Hand Osteoarthritis: the Micro-Rnas

Purpose: Hand osteoarthritis (HOA) is a highly prevalent disease, associated with important disability and socio-economic burden. Erosive HOA, almost exclusively found in women, induces more disability, but the pathophysiology is poorly known. Susceptibility genes identified to date only explain a minor proportion of the risk. We have hypothesized that epigenetic processes could play a role and we focused on micro-RNAs, which are small noncoding RNAs interfering with messenger RNAs, leading to their repression or destruction, as potential regulators involved in the pathophysiology of HOA.