There is hopeful news for people who suffer from joint pain. A recent study has found that a medicine called colchicine might help lower the chances of needing surgery to replace a knee or hip.
This could be a big step forward in helping people manage osteoarthritis, a painful joint condition that affects millions of people around the world.
Osteoarthritis is the most common type of arthritis. It often affects older adults, but younger people can get it too, especially if they have injured their joints or are overweight. The disease happens when the cartilage in the joints slowly wears away. Cartilage is a soft tissue that helps protect the bones in the joints.
When it breaks down, the bones start to rub against each other. This causes pain, stiffness, and swelling. The knees and hips are the joints that are most often affected. People with osteoarthritis can have trouble walking, climbing stairs, or doing simple daily tasks.
Right now, there is no cure for osteoarthritis. Doctors usually suggest things like exercise, losing weight, and taking pain medicine to help manage the symptoms. If the pain becomes too much or the joint is badly damaged, people might need surgery to replace the joint with an artificial one.
That’s where colchicine may help. Colchicine is a drug that has been used for many years to treat gout, which is another condition that causes joint pain. Colchicine helps by reducing inflammation in the body.
Since inflammation is also part of what causes damage in osteoarthritis, researchers thought colchicine might help slow the damage and reduce the need for surgery.
To find out if colchicine works, scientists from the Netherlands and Australia did a large study. They included more than 5,500 people between the ages of 35 and 82. These people came from 43 different hospitals and clinics.
Half of the group took a small daily dose of colchicine (0.5 mg). The other half took a fake pill called a placebo that had no real medicine in it. The study lasted for about two and a half years, and the people did not know which pill they were taking.
In the end, the researchers found that fewer people in the colchicine group needed knee or hip surgery. Only 2.5% of the people who took colchicine had joint replacement surgery, compared to 3.5% of the people who took the placebo.
While that may seem like a small difference, it could mean a lot when looking at large numbers of patients. It may mean fewer surgeries, less pain, and lower healthcare costs. The study also found that the benefit seemed to be stronger in men, but more research is needed to know if it works just as well in women.
Colchicine has been used safely for a long time. The dose used in this study was small, so the chance of serious side effects was low. Still, more research is needed to be sure that colchicine is safe and helpful for everyone with osteoarthritis, especially for people with other health issues.
This research supports the idea that inflammation is a bigger part of osteoarthritis than we used to think. It also shows that old medicines like colchicine might have new uses.
Right now, colchicine is not approved to treat osteoarthritis. People should not take it unless a doctor says it’s okay. But if future studies confirm these findings, this simple pill could become a new way to help people manage joint pain and avoid surgery.
If you care about pain, please read studies about Scientists find a new way to manage knee pain and findings of Promising new drug offers hope for chronic nerve pain relief.
If you care about pain, please read studies about Chronic morphine use for cancer pain may increase bone loss and findings of Scientists find a new hope for chronic pain.
The study was published in the medical journal Annals of Internal Medicine.
Copyright © 2025 Knowridge Science Report. All rights reserved.
