Osteoarthritis & hEDS/HSD
Early Osteoarthritis in Hypermobility (hEDS/HSD)
None of us writing this are doctors. This page collects what the published research actually says about early osteoarthritis in hEDS/HSD, so you have something concrete to bring to a doctor.
Osteoarthritis is usually framed as a condition of older age, driven by decades of wear. If you are hypermobile and getting joint-degeneration signs well before you would expect them, real data suggests you are not imagining that it is happening earlier than it should.
How Common Is Early Osteoarthritis in hEDS/HSD?
The same 2023 study of 327 hEDS/HSD patients from an Italian reference center found early osteoarthritis in 53.99% of the cohort overall - more than half. The rate rose sharply with age: in hEDS patients aged 30 or older it was found in 75.00%, compared to 41.03% of those under 30. In HSD, the pattern was even starker: 72.37% in the 30-plus group versus just 16.00% under 30.
There was no significant difference in overall rate between hEDS and HSD, meaning this appears to affect the broader hypermobility spectrum, not just the more severe diagnostic category. The likely mechanism is straightforward: joints that repeatedly sublux or move outside their normal range accumulate mechanical wear faster than stable joints do, so degenerative changes that would typically take decades to appear show up earlier.
What to do with this
If you are hypermobile and experiencing joint pain, stiffness, or reduced range of motion that feels more like wear-and-tear than an acute injury, it is worth raising early osteoarthritis specifically with a doctor rather than assuming you are too young for it to be relevant. The joint-instability research and strength-training evidence covered elsewhere on this site is directly relevant here too - reducing how much unstable movement a joint goes through may be one of the few things within your control to slow this process, though this specific study did not test interventions.