New drug tanezumab shows promise for some people with osteoarthritis… but it’s early days
The safety and efficacy of tanezumab – a drug for people with osteoarthritis – has been reported in the Journal of Rheumatology.
US studies compared the performance of the drug, administered intravenously, to naproxen in the treatment of hip or knee osteoarthritis. The two studies involved 828 and 840 patients, who were given 5mg and 10mg doses of tanezumab compared to placebo and 500mg twice-daily administration of naproxen.
In both trials, tanezumab was associated with less pain and improved function compared to the placebo. And 5mg produced greater pain reduction and favorable functional and global outcomes than naproxen.
Pain reductions with tanezumab versus naproxen were not significant, suggesting that the larger dose does not offer the same superiority over naproxen.
Although tanezumab seemed to have worse side effects (including pain in extremities, peripheral oedema and arthralgia) overall frequency of and discontinuations due to adverse events were similar to people taking naproxen and those taking the placebo.
“Tanezumab provides efficacious treatment of knee or hip osteoarthritis and may have therapeutic utility in patients with osteoarthritis who experience inadequate analgesia with nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs,” the research team comments.
The drug is still being trialed and is not yet available. A spokesperson from Arthritis Research UK comments:
“This is the first drug specifically designed to target the pain of osteoarthritis. It does appear to work, but has to be given into a vein and may be associated with some fairly important side effects. Where it may have a place is in the treatment of the fairly small group of patients who have a very rapidly progressive painful arthritis that does not respond to conventional pain-killing drugs. Further research is clearly needed.”
Image credit: Noah
