Hand osteoarthritis: current knowledge and new ideas.

Hand osteoarthritis (OA) is a prevalent disease that can lead to substantial pain and physical disability. Currently, no disease-modifying drugs exist for the treatment of OA. Most OA research has been conducted on knee OA and we have limited knowledge about disease mechanisms in hand OA. During her research career, Ida K Haugen (IKH) has focused on the epidemiology of hand OA and imaging techniques. She has established a large international network, providing the opportunity to study the epidemiology of hand OA in large international OA cohorts. In the Framingham study, she found that symptomatic hand OA was present in 16% of women and 8% of men aged between 40 and 84 years. In her PhD thesis, IKH studied the reliability and validity of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in hand OA. In collaboration with OMERACT (Outcome Measures in Rheumatology), an MRI scoring system for hand OA was developed. MRI is more sensitive than radiographs for detecting structural abnormalities. Synovitis, as detected by both MRI and ultrasound, is associated with pain and predicts future disease progression. Hence, synovitis may represent a treatment target in hand OA. Her future research plans include the observational Nor-Hand study and a placebo-controlled randomized trial on methotrexate (MTX) in hand OA. The data collection of 300 patients in the Nor-Hand study is ongoing, and focuses on causes of pain and novel imaging techniques to assess inflammation in hand OA. In a future clinical trial, patients with moderate to severe long-lasting pain and inflammation will be treated with MTX and the effect on pain and inflammation will be explored.