Abstract

The study was conducted to evaluate the prescription patterns of various agents for osteoarthritis in a population specific cohort in Shandong Province, China. Data obtained from the Hospital Databases, which consisted of electronic medical records and prescription information. All the enrolled study subjects (n=212546) are with a clinically detected osteoarthritis during 2010-2015. Medicine prescription pattern was demonstrated using medication possession ratio, corresponding number of days administered with that particular medicine. The drugs examined comprised of analgesics (metamizole and paracetamol), oral and topical non-steroidal antiinflammatory drugs, cyclooxygenase 2 inhibitors, opioids (fentanyl and tramadol) and symptomatic slow-acting drugs in osteoarthritis. The most generally employed regimen for the treatment osteoarthritis was consisted of mainly three agents (53.5 % osteoarthritis patients). Most regularly used medicines (medication possession ratio ≥50 %) were chondroitin (21 %), glucosamine (16 %) and oral non-steroidal antiinflammatory drugs (14 %). Use of chondroitin, cyclooxygenase 2 inhibitors and opioids was increased beyond 5 years of tenure. However, frequency of all the other drugs was decreased. The combination regimens could cause potential drug interactions, may impact the health of osteoarthritis patients. In this study, increase in the use of cyclooxygenase 2 inhibitors and opioids is substantial due to the effect on safety and prices of the medication. Findings of this study should alert clinicians to the potential unnecessary costs and iatrogenic effects in the management of patients with osteoarthritis.