Can Prolotherapy Help With Knee Pain?

I’ve written very little about prolotherapy. The idea sounds intriguing and promising: Create a minor irritation in knee joint tissue, through injections of a substance such as sugar water, and stimulate the body’s own healing process. Doug Kelsey seems to be a fan, which is a good sign. But I’ve refrained from writing about it because I don’t know much about the treatment or how effective it’s proven to be.

Well, here’s some good news.

Knee pain appears to decrease up to one year after “prolotherapy,” a series of sugar water injections at the site of the pain, according to a new study.

The study included 90 knee osteoarthritis sufferers, ages 40 to 76, who were randomly assigned to one of three groups. The first group received sugar-water prolotherapy injections, the second salt-water placebo injections, and the last set of subjects were just shown how to do at-home exercises. The injection groups got at least three shots over 17 weeks, and were monitored over a year.

The results: The prolotherapy subjects improved 16 points on a 100-point scale for knee function (compared with a gain of 5 points for the saline group and 7 points for the exercisers). When it came to reporting less frequent and less severe pain, the prolotherapy group impoved 16 points on the same scale, compared with 7 points for the saline injected and 9 points for the exercise group.

Hmm. Sure sounds good. Also the researchers said the study, though small, was not too small.

Is it worth giving prolotherapy a whirl, if your knees are stubbornly resistant to getting better? I’d certainly consider it. Anyone out there who’s had prolo who wants to chime in?

Note: Unfortunately, I should add a bit of a negative footnote. Prolotherapy treatments cost $200 to $1,000 apiece, and they’re not covered by Medicare. I’m not sure about private insurance though.