Causes

Knee arthrosis often occurs in the form of pain. Depending on the stage, this can be more or less pronounced. It is important to take early action to counteract the loss of cartilage in the knee joint.

This can have various causes. Often, however, knee arthrosis is caused by increased wear and tear due to incorrect loading. Axis malpositions in the foot, knee and hip joint can have a positive influence on such degenerative wear and tear. In most cases, patellar pain develops in advance. You can find more information about this in the article Patellar Pain.Any incorrect loads due to a deviation in the static should be clarified early on with a gait analysis.

Medicines against inflammation

Drugs play an important role in the treatment of knee arthrosis. In particular, drugs are often used to treat inflammation of the joint. The drugs of choice here are the so-called NSAIDs, which stand for non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.

The substances from this group have a simultaneous anti-inflammatory and analgesic effect by intervening in the synthesis of pain and inflammation mediators. NSAIDs inhibit a specific enzyme, cyclooxigenase. The cyclooxigenase is involved in the removal of prostaglandins.

Prostaglandins are endogenous substances that cause pain and inflammatory reactions. The inhibition of cyclooxigenase by the NSAIDs stops this process. Examples of drugs from this group of active ingredients are:

Diclofenac
Ibuprofen
Acetylsalicylic acid.

Medication for pain

In the therapy of knee arthrosis, analgesics are of central importance in the treatment of pain. Analgesics are substances that are capable of reducing or completely eliminating the sensation of pain without affecting other important functions of the central nervous system. In the case of investment drugs, a distinction is usually made between the two most important groups of active ingredients: The substances differ in particular in their mechanism of action, which also results in the large number of different side effects.

Examples of non-opioid analgesics are paracetamol, ASS or ibuprofen.

These are, on the one hand, the opioids, highly effective substances used for moderate to severe pain (e.g. morphine, oyxcodone, methadone or fentanyl).
The second group are the non-opioid analgesics, which can also be divided into different subgroups. Non-opioid analgesics are used for mild pain and in combination with opioids for severe pain.