Mechanism of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Treating Knee Osteoarthritis

Mina Wang; Lu Liu; Claire Shuiqing Zhang; Zehuan Liao; Xianghong Jing; Marc Fishers; Luopeng Zhao; Xiaobai Xu; Bin Li

doi:10.2147/JPR.S247827

Mechanism of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Treating Knee Osteoarthritis

J Pain Res. 2020 Jun 15:13:1421-1429. doi: 10.2147/JPR.S247827. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Mina Wang^{1

2}, Lu Liu^{1

3}, Claire Shuiqing Zhang⁴, Zehuan Liao^{5

6}, Xianghong Jing³, Marc Fishers⁷, Luopeng Zhao^{1

8}, Xiaobai Xu¹, Bin Li¹

Affiliations

¹ Acupuncture and Moxibustion Department, Beijing Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Capital Medical University, Beijing Key Laboratory of Acupuncture Neuromodulation, Beijing, People's Republic of China.
² Graduate School, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, Beijing 100029, People's Republic of China.
³ Institute of Acupuncture and Moxibustion, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Beijing, People's Republic of China.
⁴ School of Health and Biomedical Sciences, RMIT University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
⁵ School of Biological Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 637551.
⁶ Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology (MTC), Karolinska Institutet, Biomedicum, Stockholm SE-17177, Sweden.
⁷ Department of Neurology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
⁸ Beijing Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Capital Medical University, Beijing Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Beijing, People's Republic of China.

Abstract

Knee osteoarthritis (KOA) is a degenerative disease, making a unique contribution to chronic pain, edema, and limited mobility of knee joint. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is a common complementary therapy for KOA and has been found effective. The aim of this review is to consolidate the current knowledge about the mechanism of four interventions of TCM: acupuncture, moxibustion, herbs, and massage in treating KOA, and how they alleviate symptoms such as pain, swelling, and dysfunction. Furthermore, this review highlights that four therapies have different mechanisms but all of them can manage KOA through inhibiting inflammation, which indicates that alternative therapies should be considered as a viable complementary treatment for pain management in clinical practice.

Keywords: acupuncture; herbs; knee osteoarthritis; massage; moxibustion.

Publication types

Review

Grants and funding

This study was funded by the National Key Research and Development Plan (2019YFC1709703), 2019 National Administration of Traditional Chinese-Project of building evidence based practice capacity for TCM-Project BEBPC-TCM (NO. 2019XZZX-ZJ002), Beijing Traditional Chinese Medicine Science and Technology Project (Grant No. JJ2018-53), China Association for Science and Technology Young Talent Lifting Project (2019-2021ZGZJXH-QNRC001), Capital Health Development Scientific Research Project Excellent Young Talents (Capital development 2020-4-2236), Beijing Dongcheng District Excellent Talent Development Funding (2019WJGW-10-05), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation Funded Project (2018M630261), Beijing Hospitals Authority Youth Programme (QML20181001), and Beijing Traditional Chinese Medicine Administration-Innovative and Inheritable “Fist” Construction Projects of Yanjing School.