United States: Scientists found that a widely used diabetes medication shows potential for treating arthritis among obese persons with knee problems, according to recent research.
Based on data published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers found that metformin treatment decreased knee arthritis pain for six months, which might postpone the necessity of knee replacement surgery.
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According to senior researcher Flavia Cicuttini, a professor of health systems services and policy at Monash University in Australia, “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,” US News reported.
“It is a different way to treat knee osteoarthritis pain,” Cicuttini reported.
The diabetes medication Metformin works to decrease blood sugar concentrations as a treatment for patients who have type 2 diabetes.
Drugs.com indicates that this medication limits the absorption of sugar from the intestines and decreases glucose production in the liver while making insulin more effective.
They selected 107 obese and overweight individuals with knee pain to receive metformin pills as part of the study, while the other half received a placebo.
After six months, the participants who took metformin showed a 31-point decrease in their pain levels, but the placebo group experienced only a 19-point decrease in pain.
The research findings demonstrate that metformin may serve as an inexpensive treatment method to decrease knee arthritis pain, according to Cicuttini.
Cicuttini explains that doctors currently instruct patients about weight loss and physical activity as knee pain treatment, although these recommendations prove challenging to many individuals.
According to her research explanation, acetaminophen, together with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs along with topical creams, provide minimal relief for knee pain.
People generally opt for knee replacement operations at the earliest time point after arthritis pain develops to intolerable levels.
“At first glance, this may seem reasonable, but it is a major problem because patient dissatisfaction with knee replacements is already high at between 20 and 30%, even when the operation is technically perfect,” Cicuttini stated.