EFFECTIVENESS OF CONDROPROTECTORS IN TREATING OSTEOARTHRITIS: A BIBLIOGRAPHIC REVIEW

Abstract

Introduction: Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common rheumatologic disease in the world and the elderly are the most affected, although there is no defined age for its onset. Obesity is a risk factor, with healthy eating habits and physical exercise practices being recommended for treatment and prevention. The pharmacological treatment for OA is oral chondroprotective agents and viscosupplements, although anti-inflammatory drugs are widely prescribed, they do not cause clinical improvement, they only treat the symptoms of the disease. Objective: This study gathered articles from clinical trials in Brazil with the purpose of investigating whether the pharmacological treatments used are effective. Methods: The electronic platforms used for data collection were: Scielo, CAPES Journal Portal and Google Academic. Articles published in the last six years with clinical trials in Brazil were considered. Articles involving surgeries, those that used physiotherapy as an adjunct therapy and those that used animal or non-human research in their research were excluded. The search was through the descriptors: hyaluronic acid, glucosamine and chondroitin. Results: The search resulted in six articles, in which three were used chondroprotectors and the other three viscosupplements. Chondroprotectors were effective in 66.66% of clinical trials and viscosupplements in 100%. Conclusion: Pharmacological treatments for OA showed high efficacy, however the sample of the present work was small, thus, further studies are needed to confirm the results obtained.