Strontium ranelate in the treatment of knee osteoarthritis: new insights and emerging clinical evidence
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Osteoarthritis is a primary cause of disability and functional incapacity. Pharmacological treatment is currently limited to symptomatic management, and in advanced stages, surgery remains the only solution. The therapeutic armamentarium for osteoarthritis remains poor in treatments with an effect on joint structure, that is, disease-modifying osteoarthritis drugs (DMOADs). Glucosamine sulfate and chondroitin sulfate are the only medications for which some conclusive evidence for a disease-modifying effect is available. Strontium ranelate is currently indicated for the prevention of fracture in severe osteoporosis. Its efficacy and safety as a DMOAD in knee osteoarthritis has recently been explored in the SEKOIA trial, a 3-year randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. Outpatients with knee osteoarthritis, Kellgren and Lawrence grade 2 or 3, and joint space width (JSW) of 2.5-5 mm received strontium ranelate 1 g/day (n = 558) or 2 g/day (n = 566), or placebo (n = 559). This sizable population was aged 62.9 years and had a JSW of 3.50 ± 0.84 mm. Treatment with strontium ranelate led to significantly less progression of knee osteoarthritis: estimates for annual difference in joint space narrowing versus placebo were 0.14 mm [95% confidence interval (CI) 0.05-0.23 mm; p < 0.001] for 1 g/day and 0.10 mm (95% CI 0.02-0.19 mm; p = 0.018) for 2 g/day, with no difference between strontium ranelate groups. Radiological progression was less frequent with strontium ranelate (22% with 1 g/day and 26% with 2 g/day versus 33% with placebo, both p < 0.05), as was radioclinical progression (8% and 7% versus 12%, both p < 0.05). Symptoms also improved with strontium ranelate 2 g/day only in terms of total WOMAC (Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index) score (p = 0.045), and its components for pain (p = 0.028) and physical function (p = 0.099). Responder analyses using a range of criteria for symptoms indicated that the effect of strontium ranelate 2 g/day on pain and physical function was clinically meaningful. Strontium ranelate was well tolerated. The observation of both structure and symptom modification with strontium ranelate 2 g/day makes SEKOIA a milestone in osteoarthritis research and treatment.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.009 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".