If you or someone you know has ever experienced persistent hand pain, you know how much it can affect daily life. Simple tasks, like buttoning a shirt or opening a jar, can become difficult, frustrating, and painful.
This kind of discomfort might be more than just a minor annoyance—it could be due to a condition called hand osteoarthritis (OA).
Recent research from Monash University and Alfred Health offers hope in the form of a commonly used drug that could help manage the pain of hand OA.
What is Hand Osteoarthritis?
Osteoarthritis is a condition that affects the joints, the places where bones meet and allow movement. In hand OA, the small joints in the hands are affected, causing pain, stiffness, and difficulty with everyday tasks.
It’s a condition that becomes more common with age, and by the time people reach 85, about half of all women and a quarter of all men will have experienced hand OA.
What makes this condition especially challenging is that, until recently, there weren’t many effective treatments specifically for hand OA pain.
But this new research is exciting because it suggests that there may finally be a way to manage the pain associated with this condition.
Methotrexate: An Old Drug with New Potential
The drug methotrexate has been around since the 1980s, commonly used to treat conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, which causes inflammation and pain in the joints.
However, a team led by Professor Flavia Cicuttini at Monash University wanted to see if methotrexate could also be effective for people with hand OA.
In their study, participants took 20 mg of methotrexate once a week for six months. The results were promising: those taking methotrexate reported significantly less pain and stiffness in their hands compared to a group that took a placebo.
In fact, the group on methotrexate experienced double the improvement in pain levels compared to the placebo group. And what’s even more exciting is that the pain relief continued to improve over the entire six-month period.
Looking Ahead: The Future of Hand OA Treatment
While these findings offer hope, Professor Cicuttini and her team are eager to continue their research.
They want to know more about how long methotrexate can provide relief, how it should be used for the best results, and whether it can slow down the damage that hand OA causes to the joints over time.
This research is particularly important for women, who often experience hand OA and its painful effects around the time of menopause.
Finding a treatment that can provide real relief could significantly improve the quality of life for many people living with hand OA.
The future of hand OA treatment looks brighter thanks to this study. Methotrexate, a drug long known for its use in other forms of arthritis, could offer a new solution for people struggling with the daily pain and stiffness caused by hand osteoarthritis.
Though more research is needed, the findings are a promising step toward better pain management.
For those dealing with hand OA, this research isn’t just about scientific data—it’s about the potential for real, lasting relief from pain. It offers hope that managing hand OA might soon be easier and more attainable.
The research findings from this study were published in The Lancet.
If you care about arthritis, please read studies about extra virgin olive oil for arthritis, and pomegranate: A natural treatment for rheumatoid arthritis.
For more information about arthritis, please see recent studies about how to live pain-free with arthritis, and results showing medical cannabis may help reduce arthritis pain, back pain.
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