Interaction relationships of osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis related genes.

BACKGROUND Osteoarthritis (OA), also referred to as degenerative joint disease or wear-and-tear arthritis, is caused by the breakdown of joint cartilage. Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic, inflammatory type of arthritis. RA is also classified as a kind of autoimmune disease. AIM To find the important genes in RA and OA. MATERIALS AND METHODS Comprehensively compared 3 datasets of RA with 2 datasets of OA, 98 genes were sifted. We explored protein-protein associations processed for the 98 genes by mining famous gene/protein interaction/association database. RESULTS We found most of those genes appear to play a key role in the anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressive effects. CONCLUSIONS Our research would play a useful role in the diagnosis and treatment of OA and RA.