The misery of creaky, arthritic knees can be soothed with pain drugs, but there's no cure short of knee replacement surgery. In a new study on older women, researchers looked at whether the drugs used to prevent bone loss in osteoporosis could help.

What the researchers wanted to know: What effect do antiresorptive drugs have on arthritis of the knee?

What they did: The researchers looked at 668 women ages 69 to 81, participants in a larger long-term study of disability in elderly people. About 500 of them weren't taking any antiresorptive drugs. Of the 164 who were, 125 were taking estrogen, eight were taking raloxifene (Evista), and 31 were taking alendronate (Fosamax). All of these women had had symptoms of osteoarthritis in at least one knee and had X-rays done of their knees as part of the study. Most also had MRIs, which give a better image of soft tissue such as cartilage, which falls apart in osteoarthritis.

What they found: Women who used antiresorptive drugs were less likely to have certain abnormalities of the bone at the knee than women who didn't. This seemed to be less true for women on raloxifene than women on the other drugs. Also, women taking alendronate had less knee pain than women who weren't taking that drug. But antiresorptive drugs didn't have any other effect on the symptoms women reported or on the other signs of arthritis that researchers looked for in the X-rays and MRIs.

What the study means to you: In a few ways, antiresorptive drugs did seem to help; however, more research would be necessary to tell whether these drugs are likely to make enough of a difference in arthritis to suggest them to women.

Caveats: This wasn't a randomized trial—women were prescribed drugs by their physicians, and the researchers for this study just checked out the results. Women who are taking antiresorptive drugs probably already have less dense bones or osteoporosis, which—although they're not exactly desirable conditions—might help prevent osteoarthritis. Also, because alendronate and raloxifene are relatively new, there were too few women who'd used those drugs long enough for the researchers to be able to see how that affected knees.

Find out more: Information from the National Library of Medicine on raloxifene and alendronate

Read the article: Carbone, L.D., et al. "The Relationship of Antiresorptive Drug Use to Structural Findings and Symptoms of Knee Osteoarthritis." Arthritis & Rheumatism. November 2004, Vol. 50, No. 11, pp. 3516–3525.

Abstract online: www3.interscience.wiley.com