The incidence of osteoarthritis is ever increasing in recent years, even at the younger age of onset. Osteoarthritis is a kind of degenerative disease, due mainly to aging, obesity, strain, trauma, joint congenital abnormalities, and joint deformity caused by articular cartilage degradation injury, joint edge and subchondral bone reactive hyperplasia of osteojoint disease, also known as degenerative arthritis or senile arthritis. The main clinical manifestations of the disease are joint pain, tenderness, stiffness, joint swelling, limited mobility, muscle atrophy, and joint deformity. Joint discomfort often occurs in the load-bearing joints, such as knee, hip, spine, and finger joints. Among them, the knee is the most prone to discomfort, where the incidence of knee osteoarthritis is much higher than that of other joint inflammation in the body. Knee osteoarthritis is generally treated to relieve the pain for better joint mobility. Current treatments for knee osteoarthritis can be divided into three categories: non-drug, drug, and surgical treatment. Non-drug treatment includes psychological education, exercise promotion, weight loss, and joint protection. Drug treatment includes the use of non-opioid analgesics, topical analgesics, non-sterol anti-inflammatory drugs, narcotic analgesics, intra-articular injections of sterols, and hyaluronic acid. Surgical treatment includes joint debridement and joint replacement. Glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate supplements have been proven to be effective in the treatment of knee osteoarthritis for the less structural damage of articular cartilage in the different clinical trials. The present study aims to investigate the clinical efficacy of a tableted candy on knee osteoarthritis. The cartilage extract, turmeric, Pueraria lobata, and Coix seed powder were also taken as the main components. Clinic human feeding trials were performed on the visual analogue scale (VAS), Western Ontario, and McMaster University Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC), clinical symptom score, serum interleukin-6 (IL-6) and high-sensitivity C reactive protein (hs-CRP) levels before and after the experiment between the experimental and the placebo group. The results showed that there was a significant decrease in the VAS score, pain WOMAC, joint stiffness, physiological function, and total score after eating the tableted candy samples in the experimental group, compared with the control ( P < 0.01). There was a significant decrease in the clinical symptom scores of joint pains, tenderness, morning stiffness time, swelling, and total score ( P < 0.01), even lower than those in the control group. Meanwhile, the effective rate (61.02%) was significantly higher than that in the control group (15.25%) ( P < 0.01). In addition, the level of IL-6 in the experimental group significantly decreased ( P < 0.05) during the test period, indicating no adverse reactions. No significant changes or abnormalities were observed in the safety indicators of all subjects. In conclusion, the tablet candy can be expected to relieve the pain and swelling of the knee joint, in order to improve the function and activity of the knee joint in the control of the disease. There was closely related to the regulation of inflammatory factor IL-6. Therefore, safe and effective health food can be expected to greatly improve knee osteoarthritis.

This paper studied the synergistic effects of turmeric extract, cartilage extract, Pueraria lobata and Coix (Coix lacryma-jobi) seed extract alone and the combination on the improvement of cartilage damage of rats with knee osteoarthritis. The synergistic effects of the three extracts in rat knee osteoarthritis were evaluated mainly by reducing knee swelling (inflammation), protecting chondrocyte and repairing joint cartilage. The results show that the turmeric extract has a more obvious effect in inhibiting joint swelling and improving cartilage damage, which is specifically manifested in the ability to better improve the levels of Collagen Ⅱ, matrix metalloproteinase 3 (MMP3), cartilage oligomeric matrix protein (COMP), tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) and superoxide dismutase (SOD). The cartilage extract significantly improves the arthritic lesions by improving the levels of MMP3, COMP, TNF-α, prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) and SOD. Pueraria lobata and Coix seed extract improves the levels of Collagen Ⅱ and SOD, inhibits the elevation of MMP3, COMP, TNF-α and interleukin 1β (IL-1β), and improves cartilage damage of rats with knee osteoarthritis. The combined use of the three extracts exhibits better effects on the repair of rat knee cartilage. These data imply that by optimizing the ratio of turmeric extract, cartilage extract and Pueraria lobata and Coix seed extract, functional foods can be developed with significant anti-inflammatory and cartilage repairing effects and contribute to the realization of “Healthy China 2030”.