A research team has developed a risk score based on individuals’ genetic data to predict their likelihood of needing hip or knee replacement surgery for osteoarthritis. The score’s predictive ability was validated in a study published in Arthritis & Rheumatology.  

The score incorporates 10 genetic sequence variants for predicting a person’s risk of needing knee replacement surgery and 37 genetic sequence variants for predicting the risk of needing hip replacement surgery.  

Among 12,093 individuals of European genetic descent aged ≥70 years, 1,422 (11.8%) had knee replacements and 1,297 (10.7%) had hip replacements. Participants with high risk scores had a 1.44-times higher odds of knee replacement and a 1.88-times higher odds of hip replacement, compared with those with low risk scores.   

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