Treatment of hip osteoarthritis with glucocorticoids

Osteoarthritis (OA), also known as degenerative joint disease, hypertrophic arthritis, senile arthritis and articular cartilage osteoarthritis, is a common clinical disease. The common symptoms of OA include pain in affected joints, aggravation after exercise, remission after rest and a feeling of stiffness without activity for a long time.1 OA can occur in any joint, but mainly in the hip joint, knee joint, hand joint and spine facet joint. Recently, it was with great interest that we read the report entitled ‘Intramuscular glucocorticoid injection versus placebo injection in hip osteoarthritis: a 12 week blinded randomised controlled trial’ by Dorleijn and colleagues published online in 7 March 2018 in Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases .2 Dorleijn et al concluded that an intramuscular glucocorticoid injection showed effectiveness in patients with hip OA on one of the three primary outcomes at 2 weeks postinjection and all primary outcomes showed effectiveness from 4 to 6 weeks. Certainly, the study of Dorleijn et al will be important for …