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A gel injected into lame horses to relieve joint pain could also help ease the pain of osteoarthritis in humans.
The water-based gel, called arthrosamide, has been used for more than a decade to treat wear and tear in the leg joints of horses. Now the treatment is being rolled out to patients awaiting knee replacement surgery.
Tests on people with arthritis showed that most got pain relief within days or weeks of vaccination and that the benefits lasted at least a year.
Around nine million people in the UK suffer from osteoarthritis, where the protective cartilage in a joint breaks down, meaning bone rubs against bone, causing inflammation, pain and ultimately problems moving the joint.
The main cause is aging, as the joints wear out. Other risk factors include obesity, family history of osteoarthritis and sports injuries.
Patients often need anti-inflammatory painkillers, but long-term use can damage the stomach.
Steroid injections can also reduce inflammation - but there is a risk of a cortisone surge, in which the injected steroid (cortisone) crystallizes in the joint and triggers further inflammation.
Around 100,000 people in the UK require knee replacement surgery every year, but one in five patients report little improvement.
The horse gel is designed to act as a cushion in the joints where the cartilage is worn out. It has been shown that 80 percent of lame horses can move freely again.
Since the knee joints of horses and humans are quite similar, scientists from Contura, the Danish company that developed the gel, decided to try the vaccination on human arthritis patients as well.
It consists of 97.5 percent water and 2.5 percent polyacrylamide - a robust, durable plastic that can withstand significant forces.
After the patient receives a local anesthetic in the knee, the gel is injected into the joint, where it cushions the bones and prevents them from rubbing together, thereby reducing inflammation and relieving pain.
Patients often need anti-inflammatory painkillers, but long-term use can damage the stomach
The manufacturer claims that it provides lasting pain relief because the gel is not absorbed or broken down by the body and stays in place for months or possibly years.
Results from a Copenhagen University Hospital study involving 49 patients with osteoarthritis of the knee showed that more than 70 percent experienced significant pain relief from a single gel injection, lasting at least a year in most cases, the Journal of Orthopedic Research and Therapy reported last year.
The most common side effects were mild to moderate pain at the injection site and mild swelling around the knee joint in the first few weeks afterward.
The treatment, which is currently undergoing larger clinical trials, is not yet available on the NHS but is being rolled out in some private British clinics.
Philip Conaghan, professor of musculoskeletal medicine at the University of Leeds, said the gel therapy looked promising but larger studies were needed to confirm its benefits.
“The data on arthrosamide is very interesting, but we need to see the results of better designed clinical trials to understand whether it will be an option for people with osteoarthritis pain,” he said.
Meanwhile, regular mud baths could ease the pain of knee osteoarthritis, a study suggests. Researchers at Sapienza University in Rome pooled data from 21 previous studies and found that mud baths improved mobility and reduced pain, according to a report in the journal La Clinica Terapeutica.
The heat generated by immersion in thick mud is believed to dilate the blood vessels in the knee, improving blood flow in the joint and reducing inflammation.
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