Very-high-molecular-weight vs high-molecular-weight hyaluronic acid injections show long-term sustained benefits in the treatment of osteoarthritis of the knee: a 15-year Indian cohort study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Introduction Lack of confidence in intra-articular hyaluronic acid injections for osteoarthritis (OA) may result from conflicting guidelines and pooling of results for different molecular weight products. Objectives The objectives were to determine responder rates to injections of very-high-molecular-weight hyaluronic acid (VHMW-HA) vs high-molecular-weight hyaluronic acid (HMW-HA) for knee OA and treatment efficacy measured by the interval between follow-up injections. Methods A retrospective analysis of a 15-year cohort from a single center. Inclusion criteria: adults with Kellgren-Lawrence Grade III or IV knee OA treated with hyaluronic acid injections. Subjects were stratified into 2 groups based on the molecular weight of the hyaluronic acid. Outcome measures were responder rates with improvement in Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC) scores of >30% from baseline vs nonresponders; those with a response lasting >6 months after each injection were considered sustained responders. Results In total, 2037 (female 1467 [72.02%] and male 570 [27.98%]) patients were treated. The overall primary responder rate was 73.44% (1496). VHMW-HA had significantly higher primary responders (75.21% vs 70.22%, P = .015) and significantly lower nonresponders (24.79% vs 29.78%, P = .015). As a subset of primary responders, the sustained responders had greater responses with VHMW-HA vs HMW-HA (85.54% vs 67.06%, P < .0001) and lower dropouts (14.46% vs 32.94%, P < .0001). The average interval between the first and the third injections was longer for VHMW-HA vs HMW-HA—5.67 vs 1.95 years ( P < .0001). Conclusions About 73.44% of subjects responded to treatment with intra-articular hyaluronic acid. The sustained response was greater in VHMW-HA vs HMW-HA and VHMW-HA has a longer duration of effect than HMW-HA.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
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) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
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".