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Knee osteoarthritis (OA) is a common, debilitating chronic disease.
Prolotherapy is
an injection of an irritant solution (often a form of sugar called dextrose)
into joints, ligaments and tendons. A typical treatment program involves 15 to
20 shots given per month for three to four months, followed by occasional,
as-needed shots. This article explained the usefulness of the prolotherapy for
the long term benefits for knee osteoarthritis.
Knee
osteoarthritis (OA) is a common, debilitating chronic disease. Prolotherapy is
an injection therapy for chronic musculoskeletal pain. Recent 52-week
randomized controlled and open label studies have reported improvement of knee
OA-specific outcomes compared to baseline status, and blinded saline control
injections and at-home exercise therapy (p<0.05). However, long term effects
of prolotherapy for knee OA are unknown. We therefore assessed long-term
effects of prolotherapy on knee pain, function and stiffness among adults with
knee OA.
Design: Post
clinical-trial, open-label follow-up stud. Outpatient; adults with
mild-to-severe knee OA completing a 52-week prolotherapy study were enrolled.
Participants
received 3-5 monthly interventions and were assessed using the validated
Western Ontario McMaster University Osteoarthritis Index, (WOMAC, 0-100
points), at baseline, 12, 26, 52 weeks, and 2.5 years.
65 participants
(58±7.4 years old, 38 female) received 4.6±0.69 injection sessions in the
initial 17-week treatment period. They reported progressive improvement in
WOMAC scores at all-time points in excess of minimal clinical important
improvement benchmarks during the initial 52-week study period, from 13.8±17.4
points (23.6%) at 12 weeks, to 20.9±2.8 points, (p<0.05; 35.8% improvement)
at 2.5±0.6 years (range 1.6-3.5 years) in the current follow-up analysis. Among
assessed covariates, none were predictive of improvement in the WOMAC score.
Prolotherapy
resulted in safe, significant, progressive improvement of knee pain, function
and stiffness scores among most participants through a mean follow-up of 2.5
years and may be an appropriate therapy for patients with knee OA refractory to
other conservative care.
Complement Ther Med. 2015 Jun;23(3):388-95
Hypertonic dextrose injection (prolotherapy) for knee osteoarthritis: Long term outcomes
Rabago D et al.
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