Efficacy and safety of complex therapy for knee osteoarthritis using a combination of chondroitin sulfate and glucosamine, as well as intra-articular administration of a medical device containing polyacrylamide gel

Objective: to evaluate the efficacy and safety of complex therapy for knee osteoarthritis (OA) using a combination of chondroitin sulfate (CS) and glucosamine (G), as well as intra-articular (IA) administration of a medical device (MD) containing polyacrylamide gel (PAAG).

Material and methods. The study included 22 patients aged 40–75 years with definite knee OA, radiographic stage II–III. Median age was 64.5 [59.0; 68.0] years. All patients received comprehensive therapy: a single IA injection of 4.0 ml of the PAAG-containing MD into the target knee in combination with oral CS (800 mg/day) and G (1000 mg/day) for 6 months. Total follow-up duration was 9 months (6 months of treatment and 3 months of follow-up).

Results and discussion. During complex therapy, a significant reduction in knee pain intensity on the visual analog scale was observed, along with improvement in all WOMAC components, patient global assessment of health status, the Lequesne index, and quality of life according to EQ-5D (p<0.05 for all). Patients and physicians rated the treatment results highly: improvement and significant improvement were recorded in 90.91% of cases. Therapy was associated with a statistically significant reduction in the need for nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs: 77.27% of patients discontinued their use already 1 month after study initiation. A significant decrease in CRP level was also recorded (p<0.05).

Conclusion. The study results confirm the significant efficacy and safety of a complex approach to OA therapy, including the use of a combination of disease-modifying drugs for OA and IA administration of an MD containing PAAG.

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