What causes osteoarthritis?

Professor David Hunter

Rheumatologist

Causes of OA

Joint pain can be caused by a lot of different diseases including osteoarthritis which is the most common type of arthritis but there are lot of other reasons why a person might have joint pain which includes rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis other causes of back pain in that context a lot of different reasons for  having joint pain it's really important that that person's joint pain be adequately diagnosed  and that you don't just rely upon Dr Google or in this context my joint pain to define what it is, is causing your joint pain but see a professional have that adequately diagnosed it may be very  common to be osteoarthritis but it may not be.

The causes of osteoarthritis are multiple but if we concentrate on those that are the big risk factors for a person developing the disease usually particularly for the knee consists of overweight and obesity, joint injury and potentially also occupational risk and genetic predisposition so familial risk of a person developing osteoarthritis. The two biggest risk factors again for the knee include overweight and obesity which accounts for about 45 to 50% of a person's predisposition to get osteoarthritis and joint injury which is about 15 to 25% of a person's predisposition to get it little lower in women, a little higher in men because of what we tend to do to ourselves. For other joints for the hand and for the hip the risks predisposed to by your familial predisposition your genes are a little bit higher than they are for the knee it's about 50% for the hand and the hip.