however, the association between obesity and OA in nonweight bearing joints,such as hands,infers a metabolic mechanism (27,39-41).in fact,recently OA was characterized as a metabolic syndrome disorder (42) giving a new perspective to the disease and the development of potential therapeutics.recently,the role of adiponectin,resistin and leptin-adiposetissue derivedproteins,know as adipokines-has been studied in OA (43,44),beside their established role in obesity,metabolic disorders and ATH