Corticosteroid injections, a typical method of relieving the pain of knee osteoarthritis, have been linked in two new studies to a hastening of the disease’s course. These results were only just presented at the Radiological Society of North America’s annual conference (RSNA).
As a result of cartilage deterioration and breakdown, osteoarthritis affects 32.5 million individuals in the United States and has a profound impact on their quality of life. About 800,000 individuals in the United States suffer from knee osteoarthritis every year. It is a degenerative disorder that worsens with time and may cause significant pain and mobility limitations. Roughly 10% of those suffering from knee osteoarthritis opt for noninvasive therapies like corticosteroid or hyaluronic acid injections.
Both investigations used cohorts from the Osteoarthritis Initiative, a long-term, multi-center research that is presently in its 14th year of following approximately 5,000 people with knee osteoarthritis.
There were 210 people involved in the Osteoarthritis Initiative trial conducted by the University of California, San Francisco; 70 of them got intraarticular injections; the remaining 140 served as a control group and were followed for two years. Injections were given to 70 individuals, 44 of whom got corticosteroids and 26 of whom received hyaluronic acid. In terms of age, sex, BMI, pain, physical activity, and illness severity, there were no differences between the treatment and control groups.
All patients had an MRI scan at the time of their injection and again two years afterwards. The meniscus, cartilage, bone marrow lesions, as well as joint fluid, and ligaments were graded for knee osteoarthritis using the whole-organ magnetic resonance imaging score (WORMS) applied to the MRI images. By comparing imaging ratings from the first scans with those from the two-year follow-up scans, the researchers were able to detect osteoarthritis progression.
Injections of corticosteroids into the knee have been linked to a speedier development of osteoarthritis in the knee generally.
The use of hyaluronic acid knee injections was not linked to a slower rate of osteoarthritis development. The rate of development of osteoarthritis, as measured by bone marrow lesions, was slower in the group that got hyaluronic injections compared to the control group.
