Patients with hip and knee osteoarthritis (OA) are at increased risk of both deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism compared with peers who have no osteoarthritis, a study shows.

Researchers analysed UK data from a large primary care database including more than 10,000 people with incident hip OA, nearly 21,000 cases of incident knee OA and more than 6000 people with incident hand OA between 2000 and 2017.

The team, led by researchers from Changsha, China, and Boston, US, compared the rates of VTE in these groups with matched groups of patients in the database who did not have incident OA over the same period.

Patients with previous VTE were excluded in what the authors believe is the first study examining associations between OA and venous thromboembolism.