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Dr. Ruderman shares if arthritis is a hereditary condition.
Dr. Ruderman:
Not all arthritis is hereditary but there does seem to be a hereditary component to many types of arthritis. Degenerative arthritis can occur spontaneously but there are cases where it does seem to run in families. Certainly autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis or lupus have a hereditary component to them. We see other people in the families who have those diseases or similar diseases suggesting that there is a hereditary basis.
Nobody has broken it down perfectly well yet so we do not know exactly which genes drive all types of arthritis. We do know that certain genes may be associated with certain types of arthritis but we are not good enough yet to measure your genes and decide whether you are going to develop arthritis, nor we are good enough to know whether you are going to transfer it to somebody else in your family, for example whether it’s likely to show up in someone else in the family.
About Dr. Ruderman, M.D.:
Dr. Eric M. Ruderman, M.D., is associate professor in the division of rheumatology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, Illinois. He is also a board member of the Arthritis Foundation of Greater Chicago.
Dr. Ruderman graduated from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University in New York, New York. He completed his residence at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and his fellowship training in rheumatology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.