Have you or someone you care about felt pain in your hands that makes everyday things hard to do? Simple actions like buttoning your shirt, holding a pen, or opening a jar can suddenly feel painful and frustrating.
This kind of hand pain might be caused by a condition called hand osteoarthritis, or hand OA for short.
Hand OA is a disease that affects the small joints in your fingers and thumbs. It causes pain, swelling, and stiffness. Many people struggle with it. About half of all women and one-quarter of all men will get it by the time they turn 85. And you don’t have to be elderly—some people start having symptoms much earlier.
Until now, there hasn’t been a good way to treat the pain from hand OA. Doctors could offer creams, painkillers, or lifestyle tips, but nothing worked very well. However, scientists from Monash University and Alfred Health in Australia have found hope in a very familiar drug—methotrexate.
Methotrexate is not a new medicine. It’s been around since the 1980s and is mostly used for treating another joint problem called rheumatoid arthritis. That disease is different from hand OA but also causes joint pain and swelling. Because methotrexate works well for rheumatoid arthritis, researchers wondered if it might help people with hand OA too.
A group of scientists, led by Professor Flavia Cicuttini, did a study to find out. In their study, people with hand OA took 20 milligrams of methotrexate once a week for six months. Another group of people took a placebo—a harmless pill with no real effect—to compare results.
The people who took methotrexate said their hand pain got much better. They felt less stiff and could move their hands more easily. In fact, their pain was reduced twice as much as those who took the placebo. What made the findings even more exciting was that people kept getting better over the full six months.
This is big news because hand OA is so common and so difficult to live with. Many people, especially women after menopause, suffer silently. Tasks like writing, cooking, and holding objects can become painful and even impossible. If methotrexate can really ease that pain, it could make life better for millions of people.
Still, this is just the beginning. The researchers want to learn more about how long methotrexate works, the best way to use it, and whether it can protect the joints from further damage. More studies will help answer these questions.
For now, this discovery is a hopeful step forward. It shows that an old, trusted medicine might be able to do something new—help people with hand OA live more comfortably. Sometimes, a solution doesn’t have to be brand new. It just has to be the right fit.
The research was published in the respected medical journal The Lancet. It’s a reminder that science keeps moving forward, and sometimes the answers we need are already right in front of us.
If you care about pain, please read studies about how to manage gout with a low-purine diet, and a guide to eating right for arthritis.
For more health information, please see recent studies about the link between processed foods and chronic diseases, and avoid these 8 foods to ease arthritis pain.
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