ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Osteoarthritis is a refractory degenerative disease that seriously affects patients’ quality of life, and brings a heavy financial burden to their families. Nowadays, treatments for osteoarthritis can only alleviate symptoms, improve joint function in a short period of time, but cannot prevent or reverse the pathological process of osteoarthritis. To date, there are no prophylactic or regenerative therapies for osteoarthritis. The signaling pathway can explain the occurrence and development of disease at the molecular level. Therefore, the regulation of signaling pathway can be used as a potential treatment for osteoarthritis. OBJECTIVE: To review the occurrence and development of osteoarthritis, aiming at providing new ideas for clinical diagnosis, treatment and deeper understanding of diseases in the future. METHODS: CNKI, Wanfang, VlP, CBMdisc, PubMed and MEDLINE databases were retrieved respectively with the keywords of “osteoarthritis; signaling pathway; EGFR; Hedgehog; NF-kB; Notch” in Chinese and English, and included literature reports regarding the signaling pathways related to osteoarthritis published in 2008-2019 were retrieved. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Normal articular cartilage function depends on the regulation of multiple signaling pathways, and the occurrence and development of osteoarthritis are also regulated by corresponding signaling pathways, providing deep understanding of osteoarthritis at the molecular level and new ideas for clinical diagnosis and treatment. Regulation of signaling pathways through drug action and gene modification is a potential treatment for osteoarthritis. However, there is a common problem in related research: most of the research on signaling pathway is isolated, and the occurrence and development of osteoarthritis may involve the joint action of multiple signal pathways. Therefore, further research is needed on the synergy of signaling pathways.