Growth Factors Levels Determine Efficacy of Platelets Rich Plasma Injection in Knee Osteoarthritis: A Randomized Double Blind Noninferiority Trial Compared With Viscosupplementation
Bibliographic record
Abstract
PURPOSE: To assess the noninferiority of a single platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injection compared with hyaluronic acid (HA), to alleviate pain and enhance functional capacity in knee osteoarthritis, and identify biological characteristics of PRP that may affect their efficacy. METHODS: Fifty-four patients with symptomatic knee osteoarthritis received a single injection of either PRP (26 patients) or HA (28 patients). They were assessed at baseline and at 1, 3, and 6 months. The primary endpoint was the change in Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Arthritis Index (WOMAC) score at 3 months, and secondary endpoints were responders' rate (improvement of at least 5 points or 40% of WOMAC total score at 3 months) of pain evaluation and patient's subjective satisfaction. Cell counts and the contents of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), platelet-derived growth factor-AB (PDGF-AB), transforming growth factor beta 1 (TGF-β1) content of injected PRP were assessed to analyze their relationship with clinical outcome. RESULTS: Both treatments proved their improvement in knee functional status and symptom relief, with a significant decrease observed at 1 month on all scores except for pain VAS in PRP group and WOMAC function score in the HA group. No difference between groups regarding WOMAC and VAS scores was observed. A higher percentage of responders was observed in the PRP group (72.7%) than in the HA group (45.8%) without significance (P = .064). The quantity of injected PDGF-AB and TGF-β1 correlated with the change in WOMAC scores at 3 months and was lower in responders than in nonresponders (P = .009 and P = .003, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: Current results indicated that a single injection of very pure PRP offers a significant clinical improvement in the management of knee osteoarthritis, equivalent to a single HA injection in this patient population. Moreover, a significant correlation between the doses of TGF-β1 and PDGF-AB and the worsening of WOMAC score 3 months after the procedure was found. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Level II, randomized double blind controlled trial.
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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 | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 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".