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Review
. 2020 Jun 15:13:1421-1429.
doi: 10.2147/JPR.S247827. eCollection 2020.

Mechanism of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Treating Knee Osteoarthritis

Mina Wang  1   2 , Lu Liu  1   3 , Claire Shuiqing Zhang  4 , Zehuan Liao  5   6 , Xianghong Jing  3 , Marc Fishers  7 , Luopeng Zhao  1   8 , Xiaobai Xu  1 , Bin Li  1
Affiliations
Review

Mechanism of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Treating Knee Osteoarthritis

Mina Wang et al. J Pain Res. .

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.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest regarding the publication of this paper.

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