Pharmacologic treatment of osteoarthritis has been confined mostly to analgesic or nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs that only modify the symptoms. We asked whether anthraquinone-2,6-disulfonic acid might act as a disease-modifying osteoarthritis drug. We evaluated the in vitro inhibitory effect of anthraquinone-2,6-disulfonic acid on cathepsin B activity and proteoglycan release from cultured rabbit cartilage challenged with interleukin-1beta in comparison with diacerhein, the prodrug of rhein.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSpa therapy and short wave therapy are two of the most commonly used non-pharmacological approaches for osteoarthritis. The aim of this study was to assess their efficacy in comparison to conventional therapy in patients with osteoarthritis of the knee in a single blind, randomized, controlled trial. Seventy-four outpatients were enrolled; 30 patients were treated with a combination of daily local mud packs and arsenical ferruginous mineral bath water from the thermal resort of Levico Terme (Trento, Italy) for 3 weeks; 24 patients were treated with short wave therapy for the same period and 20 patients continued regular, routine ambulatory care.
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