Can Arthritis Pain Be Eased By Anti-depressants?

Osteoarthritis is the most common of over 100 different kinds of arthritis. It’s a disease that generally affects post-menopausal women rather than men and is actually so common that it was once thought to be a natural part of ageing. Over 6.5 million people in the UK alone suffer from osteoarthritis; it’s not a condition to be sniffed at or to be taken even a little bit lightly. As with all of the different kinds of arthritis, it’s a chronic condition. It might recede and seem to vanish but it almost always comes back with a vengeance. As such treatment options focus on management of the condition and its symptoms as opposed to curing it.

There are all sorts of drugs which help to treat osteoarthritis. Most of them focus on dealing with the inflammatory reaction which is the cause of all the other symptoms. Easing this is the key to easing the pain and loss of mobility which is so common in sufferers. A new drug which is commonly used as an anti-depressant has shown some promise in the treatment of knee pain in sufferers of osteoarthritis. It’s called duloxetine and increases your natural production of the ‘feel good’ chemicals. These are serotonin and noradrenaline and when working together they seem to help to ease the pain suffered by arthritic patients. The drop in levels of pain was around 33%, which is astounding. As with all new forms of treatment, even re-purposing like this, it could be a while until we see it made available to the general population.