Key Takeaways

Disease-modifying drug therapies are being sought intensively for osteoarthritis (OA), but none have proved out thus far.

A previous trial in patients with OA of the hand had found that methotrexate provided some improvement in pain.

In this placebo-controlled trial, neither pain nor joint inflammation was improved with methotrexate in knee OA.

We'll be blunt: methotrexate flopped in a randomized placebo-controlled trial among patients with osteoarthritis (OA) of the knee.

Contrary to results from a previous trial in hand OA, the old-line disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drug (DMARD) failed to bring any improvement relative to placebo in either pain or an objective measure of joint inflammation after a year of treatment, according to Changhai Ding, PhD, MD, of Southern M

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