DISHing on the good news, I feel bad for the mouse

There are a lot of things about arthritis we do not know. There are a lot of things about a lot of things we don’t know though, so why’s it important we don’t know so much about certain areas of arthritis? Glad you asked. Arthritis comes in a lot of different forms and it’s incredibly common, a good proportion of people will suffer from it as they get older and though all sorts of advances and impressive new treatment techniques have come about in recent years it’s still a bit of a mystery in certain areas.

The second most common type of arthritis in the suffered in the USA today is one of these mystery areas. We know what it is and where it forms, we know the symptoms and we know some ways patients can be treated but one thing we do not know is why it occurs. I’m talking about diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis or, DISH for short. It occurs when deposits of minerals occur excessively on the edges on the vertebrae most commonly in the neck and back. This causes pain, stiffness, damage to spinal nerves and eventually can create severe issues in swallowing.  Around 12% of people older than 50 in the USA suffer from DISH and yet we don’t know why it occurs.

I’d love to say that scientists have discovered why and that the article so far has been suspense. Sadly I can’t. There is good news though; scientists have found a way of conferring the condition onto lab mice (not the best news for the mice). Now they’ve got viable test subjects they can start to experiment and try and find the reason for the condition in the first place. Being able to find the root cause will mean that doctors should be able to treat that instead of the symptoms.