Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common form of arthritis worldwide and is a major cause of pain and disability in elderly people.[1] The discrepancies between pain in OA and severity of radiographic findings are usually associated by the propensity of some patients to show sensitization phenotype and supported by recent theories that OA involves complex mechanisms of altered pain transmission.[2,3] Pain in OA is related to innumerable internal and external factors including environmental changes as diet, exercise, disease, stress but also genetic. OA has a strong genetic component but the success of previous studies has been restricted due to insufficient sample sizes and phenotype heterogeneity. The field of epigenetics continues its influential rise as a mean to better understand an organism's unique developmental identity over a lifespan.[4] Epigenetics is particularly interesting in medical research both for the potential to cause disease and as a target for therapeutic interventions.
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