The safety and efficacy of different dose schedules of hyaluronic acid in the treatment of painful osteoarthritis of the knee with joint effusion

Intra-articularly administered hyaluronic acid (HA) has been shown to be effective, in the treatment of knee osteoarthritis (OA). We carried out a double-blind randomised placebo- and arthrocentesis-controlled study to evaluate the efficacy of 3 different dose schedules of HA. One hundred patients with knee OA and at least 3cc of joint effusion were enrolled and randomly assigned to the 5 treatment groups. Pain on movement and at rest, the Lequesne index, joint mobility, volume of joint effusion, intake of analgesic, and overall judment of efficacy were evaluated at baseline and on Days 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, and 60. Recurrence was also evaluated up to six months. The evaluation of these parameters showed a signiicently superior effect of 5 and 3 injections of HA in comparison with placebo, arthrocentesis and one injection of HA. Long-term monitoring of the patients, over a period of six months, provided evidence of the value of repeater injections of HA in terms of maintenance of the results. Only few local adverse reactions, essentially transitory pain after injection, were reported. These reactions were equally distributed between the groups