Knee osteoarthritis pain may be related to a risk of early death in women, according to new research.

As someone living with arthritis, you're likely interested in the latest research on the condition. Here are some recent developments out of the United Kingdom., where researchers are looking into the historical evolution of arthritis and examining how knee arthritis pain impacts mortality in women.

UK researchers look to the past to understand arthritis

Researchers in the U.K. have recently been granted approval to study 500-year-old human bones from a monastic gravesite in Ipswich, according to BBC News. Many of the skeletons, which are usually housed at the Ipswich Museum, show signs of arthritis. Researchers hope looking at the manifestations of the condition will help them understand the ways arthritis has changed over the centuries - and why there was such a concentration of people with arthritis symptoms in Ipswich centuries ago. A human skeletal biologist, an osteo-archaeologist and a rheumatologist will all look at the bones, and will perform deeper analysis of the skeletons that prove to be the most interesting.

"They were looked at relatively recently, and preliminary assessment concluded there was the potential to have some data recorded about arthritis," Philip Wise, heritage manager at Ipswich and Colchester Museum Service, told BBC News. "It could be of benefit to modern science, because you can compare arthritis to see how the disease has changed over time - it's cutting-edge science."

Knee osteoarthritis pain may be linked with premature death in women

A new study from researchers at the Arthritis Research U.K. Center of Excellence for Sport, Exercise and Osteoarthritis at the University of Oxford found knee arthritis pain is associated with a high risk of premature death in women, according to a news release from the International Osteoporosis Foundation. Middle-aged women in Britain were tracked for an average of 22 years, and researchers found that those with knee osteoarthritis were around twice as likely to die early. They were more than three times as likely to die of heart problems than those women who did not have knee arthritis pain, according to the study.

"These findings suggest that any self-reported knee pain in osteoarthritis, as opposed to hand pain, seems to be a crucial factor leading to early cardiovascular mortality and is likely to be linked with decreased mobility," lead author Dr. Stefan Kluzek said.

He and his colleagues have called for further research addressing how people handle knee pain and how these choices impact cardiovascular risk.

For more on osteoarthritis:

Treating Osteoarthritis Naturally
Fight Osteoarthritis with the Right Exercises
Finding the Right Treatment for Your Osteoarthritis of the Knee