Doctors often prescribe steroid injections for the pain of knee-arthritis but a rigorous trial has found they work no better than a placebo.

Researchers randomly assigned a group of men & women with painful knee osteoarthritis to injections of either  a corticosteroid or a saline placebo. The subjects were injected every 3 months for two years, with the patients&the people who gave the shots not knowing who got the placebo!At the end there was no  overall difference between the two groups in pain, stiffness or how well someone could stand from a seated position or walk. Bone and joints scans also showed no significant difference except for a clinically insignificant cartilage loss in the steroid group.

So, steroid injections for short term pain relief may be used but not over the long term.

-Deccan Herald-