A group around Dr IKEGAWA Shiro at RIKEN’s Integrated Biomedical Science Center has discovered by correlation analysis comprising 25.000 Japanese, Chinese and Finnish individuals including over 4.000 LDD cases that a SNP in CHST3 (carbohydrate sulfotransferase 3) – a gene involved in proteoglycan metabolism – is a strong candidate for the onset of intervertebral disc degeneration.

Youqiang SONG et al., J Clin Invest. doi:10.1172/JCI69277