Osteoarthritis

Osteoarthritis (OA) of the knee is a common, progressive disease in which the joint cartilage breaks down. This breakdown causes the bones to rub directly against each other, resulting in stiffness, pain, and loss of movement in the joint. In advanced stages, the pain becomes intractable and disabling, limiting patients’ mobility and activities.

An estimated 27 million adults in the US suffer from symptomatic osteoarthritis. The most commonly afflicted joint is the knee affecting some 9.3 million people. Annually, about 6% or over 500,000 of knee OA sufferers experience pain so severe that they choose to have their knees replaced.

Clinical testing with Adlea has shown that a single administration (injection) of the compound into the knee can provide pain relief for weeks to months. This would offer an improvement over NSAIDs and COX-2 inhibitors which must be taken daily, may provide inadequate pain management and can cause sometimes serious side effects.

Injectable steroids are used to treat osteoarthritis of the knee, but have modest effects and may actually contribute to cartilage degeneration. Widely used hyaluronic acid products provide variable and modest patient response. Physicians are often reluctant to prescribe more potent opioid pain medications, due to the undesirable side effects of chronic use.

Adlea provides a treatment option that could potentially provide significant benefit by allowing patients to reduce the pain associated with moderate to severe OA for weeks or months, and restore quality of life by improving the function of their arthritic joint. For a subset of patients in their 40’s and 50’s, Adlea may also provide the option of delaying total knee replacement until later in life to prevent the artificial joint from wearing out and the subsequent need for additional intervention.