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Treating arthritis with gold
11/Oct/2006: Researchers say that injecting gold into the knee joints of patients suffering from Osteoarthritis or degenerative arthritis could provide relief from pain and slow down the progress of the disease.
Osteoarthritis is a condition, in which low-grade inflammation causes pain in the joints, as result of wearing of cartilage, which covers and acts as a cushion inside the joints. However, scientists fear that this treatment may not help everyone with rheumatoid arthritis.
Arthritis refers to a group of conditions that causes damages to the joints of the body and it remains as a leading cause of disability in people over 65 years of age. The first big formal trial of the gold treatment will be carried out by researchers next month, at Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark.
In this trial researchers will try to establish the effects of gold on osteoarthritis patients, by injecting gold into the knees of 50 such patients. Apart from this they will also try to compare the effects of this treatment, with a placebo or a dummy treatment on other arthritis patients.
According to an estimate of the Arthritis Research Campaign, 80 million people around the world suffer from osteoarthritis and another 350,000 people suffer from rheumatoid arthritis (an inflammatory autoimmune disorder).
Painkillers, steroids and joint replacement treatments are used generally to threat this condition. Gold has been used in the past to treat rheumatoid and other rheumatic diseases like psoriatic arthritis, a disease which causes swelling and pain around the joints.
Researchers at the University of Washington, claim that patients at the early stages of rheumatoid arthritis can benefit from gold, as it relieves joint pain and stiffness, reduces swelling and bone damage, which lowers the chance of deformity or disability. But they added that, around 20 to 30% of rheumatoid arthritis patients treated with gold will not benefit from the treatment.
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