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01-07-2022 | Osteoarthritis | News

Vitamin K supplementation may warrant study in people with knee osteoarthritis

Author: Alba Ruzafa

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medwireNews: Results from a post-hoc analysis suggest that increased dietary vitamin K intake is associated with greater improvement in symptoms among patients with knee osteoarthritis (OA), warranting further examination in clinical trials.

Changhai Ding (Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China) and colleagues analyzed data from 212 participants (median age 63 years) from the Hobart site of the VIDEO study who completed Food Frequency Questionnaires at baseline and were followed up for 2 years. At baseline the average total WOMAC score was 624.8 in patients with vitamin K levels below the median of 112.4 μg/day, and 609.2 in those with higher levels, a nonsignificant difference.

When patients were divided into four groups based on their baseline vitamin K intake, increased intake was significantly associated with reduced OA symptoms and dysfunction. Specifically, total WOMAC score improved by an average of 234.4 from baseline to 2 years among people included in quartile 4, who had the highest level of vitamin K intake, and by 270.6 among those with the second-highest level of vitamin K intake (quartile 3). These improvements were significantly greater than that seen among people included in quartile 1, who had the lowest level of vitamin K intake, at an average reduction of 112.9.

Additionally, people in quartile 3 experienced a significantly greater average improvement in WOMAC pain score than those in quartile 1 (74.8 vs 30.4), but there was no significant difference in this outcome among people in the highest versus lowest quartile.

The researchers note that their results remained “largely unchanged” after adjusting for NSAID use.

Ding et al say that there was no overall significant association between vitamin K intake and changes in structural features, such as total cartilage defect score, bone marrow lesion score, or effusion-synovitis volume. However, in subgroup analyses, they observed a negative and consistent association between vitamin K intake and changes in cartilage defects in patients with severe knee pain and radiographic OA, and in women.

Writing in Arthritis Care & Research, the study authors explain that these results “suggest that high dietary vitamin K intake may be beneficial for symptom relief in knee OA patients, and for reducing cartilage defects in those with worse OA disease and in female patients,” but add that their research “needs to be confirmed by further longitudinal studies.”

medwireNews is an independent medical news service provided by Springer Healthcare Ltd. © 2022 Springer Healthcare Ltd, part of the Springer Nature Group

Arthritis Care Res 2022; doi:10.1002/acr.24964


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