Osteoarthritis and cartilage
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Osteoarthr. Cartil. · Jan 2006
Assessment of joint space narrowing with conventional standing antero-posterior radiographs: relief in mild-to-moderate pain is not a confounder in recent osteoarthritis structure-modifying drug trials.
Knee pain relief has been suggested to potentially alter radioanatomic positioning in conventional standing antero-posterior knee radiographs. This study was performed to determine whether this is always the case and in particular if it applied to two recent randomised, placebo-controlled trials showing both symptom- and structure-modification with glucosamine sulfate in knee osteoarthritis. ⋯ Knee pain relief did not bias the report of a structure-modifying effect of glucosamine sulfate in two recent long-term trials, possibly due to the mild-to-moderate patient characteristics. Consensus deliverables should acknowledge that the potential limitations of conventional standing antero-posterior radiographs should not be overestimated since they may not apply to all patient populations and to all studies using this gold standard technique.