Asporin and knee osteoarthritis in patients of Greek origin

Abstract

Ostearthritis (OA) is characterized by focal areas of loss of the articular cartilage in synovial joints, associated with varying degrees of osteophyte formation, subchondral bone change and synovitis. The Asporin (ASPN) gene which encodes a protein of the extracellular cartilage matrix contains a triplet repeat encoding for aspartic acid (D) within exon 2 The D14 allele was found associated with knee and hip osteoarthritis in case-control study in the Japanese population. Genotyping Greek knee CA patients for the D repeats we determined that the D15 allele could be considered a risk allele for our population. (c) 2005 OsteoArthritis Research Society International. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.