Other treatment, such as experimental medical therapies and complementary and alternative therapies, may be used to relieve pain and improve joint function for people who have osteoarthritis.

Other Treatment Choices

Other medicines used to treat osteoarthritis include:

• Glucosamine and chondroitin. It is not clear if glucosamine and chondroitin, taken alone or together, can relieve pain of osteoarthritis.^{18, 19} But some studies show that chondroitin alone may relieve pain and improve function.¹⁹
• Capsaicin. Capsaicin is a cream you apply to the skin for pain relief.

Other non-medicine treatment choices for osteoarthritis include:

• Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation, or TENS, which uses electrical impulses to block pain signals to the brain.
• Acupuncture. Research has shown that acupuncture may relieve pain for osteoarthritis of the knee.²⁰
• Physical therapy.
• Ultrasound, which uses sound waves to produce heat in body tissues for pain relief.
• Diathermy, which uses heat to increase blood flow for pain relief and rapid healing.
• Taping. This involves using an adhesive tape to help position the knee cap for pain relief.²¹ You can do taping at home, but an experienced health professional, such as your doctor or physical therapist, should teach you how to do it first.
• Braces to try to shift weight off of the affected area of your knee joint. It is unclear how well these work, but there is little risk in trying them.

Experimental medical therapies

Because osteoarthritis is caused by the breakdown of cartilage, research continues for developing therapies that prevent or reduce cartilage damage. Cartilage repair, an experimental medical therapy for osteoarthritis of the knee, has been studied in small numbers of selected people. Cartilage repair techniques include removing damaged cartilage and stimulating remaining tissue to try to fill in new cartilage, transplantation of cartilage from one joint to another, transplantation of cartilage from another donor, and transplantation of cells that are grown in a lab and then injected into the joint. These therapies are still under study. To date, researchers have only studied cartilage repair therapies in younger people with small, well-defined holes in cartilage, an uncommon situation for the great majority of older people with osteoarthritis of the knee.²²

Complementary and alternative therapies

Complementary and alternative medicine is the term for a wide variety of health care practices that may be used along with or in place of standard medical treatment. There may or may not be studies that show if these therapies work or how well they work. But, many people with osteoarthritis use complementary therapies to help relieve joint pain and improve joint function.²³

Complementary and alternative therapies for osteoarthritis include dietary supplements.²³ Some dietary supplements include:

• Glucosamine and chondroitin, which may be thought of as dietary supplements. It is not clear if glucosamine and chondroitin, taken alone or together, can relieve pain of osteoarthritis.^{18, 19} But some studies show that chondroitin alone may relieve pain and improve function.¹⁹
• Vitamin D, to slow the progression of osteoarthritis.
• Vitamin E, for pain.
• Avocado/soybean (ASU) extract, to decrease pain.
• Vitamin B3, to ease pain and stiffness.
• S-adenosylmethionine (SAM-e), for pain and stiffness.
• Boron, to decrease pain and inflammation.

Complementary and alternative therapies for osteoarthritis include physical therapies such as:

• Acupuncture, which appears to improve function and provide pain relief for people with osteoarthritis.²⁴
• Pulsed electromagnetic field therapy, to stimulate cartilage growth. Small positive results have been shown, but further research is needed.²⁵
• Mind/body control, such as yoga, tai chi, and qi gong.
• Magnetic bracelets. A small study suggests that hip and knee pain from arthritis may decrease when a person wears a magnetic bracelet, although why this may happen is not clear.²⁶ Most evidence shows the effect is no greater than with a placebo.

These therapies may be helpful for some people, although their effectiveness has not been proven. Most of the studies on complementary and alternative therapies for osteoarthritis have been done on glucosamine and acupuncture and involve osteoarthritis of the knee. Most of these studies show that either of these therapies is better than treatment with a placebo.

What To Think About

Talk to your doctor about other treatments for osteoarthritis. There are many medicines, exercises, braces, assistive devices, and other treatments, and different combinations of treatments work for different people.

Research continues on developing medicines and other ways to change the structure of cartilage. Researchers hope these methods will reduce cartilage destruction and stimulate repair of existing damage. Tetracyclines are some of the medicines that researchers are currently studying. Other agents being studied include protease and collagenase inhibitors, growth factors, and cytokine inhibitors. Researchers are also investigating cartilage transplants and use of stem cells to grow new cartilage.^{1, 3}

Note that most research studies for osteoarthritis have been of knee osteoarthritis. So it is hard to know if treatments that work for the knee might also work for other joints such as the hands, hip, or spine joints.