Diabetes Drug Reduces Arthritis Knee Pain
By Chauncey Crandall, M.D.
Metformin, a drug that is commonly prescribed to help lower blood sugar levels in people with Type 2 diabetes, reduced knee arthritis pain during a six-month treatment period, potentially delaying the need for knee replacement surgery.
“Metformin works in a number of ways on the knee, including affecting low-grade inflammation and other metabolic pathways that are important in knee osteoarthritis,” said senior researcher Flavia Cicuttini, a professor at Monash University in Australia. “It is a different way to treat knee osteoarthritis pain.”
Researchers recruited 107 overweight or obese people with knee pain and randomly assigned about half to take metformin pills and the rest a placebo. The metformin group reported a 31-point reduction in pain after six months, compared with a 19-point reduction for the placebo group.
Special:
Finally, A Natural Way to Help Reverse Diabetes.
The results showed that metformin is a potentially new and affordable way to improve knee pain from arthritis.
Treatment options such as acetaminophen, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), and topical creams tend to have small benefits. As a result, people tend to seek knee replacement surgery as soon as possible when arthritis pain becomes unbearable.