Bmc Musculoskel Dis
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Bmc Musculoskel Dis · Jan 2018
Meta AnalysisIdentification of pain categories associated with change in pain in patients receiving placebo: data from two phase 3 randomized clinical trials in symptomatic knee osteoarthritis.
Pain is the principal clinical symptom of osteoarthritis (OA), and development of safe and effective analgesics for OA pain is needed. Drug development of new analgesics for OA pain is impaired by substantial change in pain in patients receiving placebo, and more data describing clinical characteristics and pain categories particularly associated with this phenomenon is needed. The purpose of this post-hoc analysis was to investigate clinical characteristics and pain categories and their association with radiographic progression and placebo pain reduction (PPR) in OA patients as measured the Western Ontario and McMasters Arthritis (WOMAC). ⋯ These results indicate that the reduction in pain in patients treated with placebo is significantly different between pain categories, as weight-bearing pain was significantly more reduced compared to non-weight-bearing pain. Further research in pain categories in OA is warranted.