New drug may reduce osteoarthritis disease progression

A potential arthritis drug of interest to experts – MIV-711 – seems to reduce bone and cartilage progression and appears to be safe, a team reports in Annals of Internal Medicine.

MIV-711 inhibits an enzyme called cathepsin K that degrades key components of bone and cartilage, so the research team decided to look at if it could help people with knee osteoarthritis. They split people with primary knee osteoarthritis into groups for 26 weeks:

• 82 people were given 100mg/day of MIV-711;
• 81 people were given 200mg/day of MIV-711;
• 77 people were given a placebo.

The new drug did not improve pain levels. But it did “significantly reduce bone and cartilage progression with a reassuring safety profile”. Although nine serious adverse events occurred in six people, none were considered to be treatment-related.

The success of the study means that MIV-711 will receive further attention as a potential disease-modifying osteoarthritis drug – good news for people with arthritis.

Click here to read the original research.

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