On March 12th, Professor Lei Guanghua from the Department of Orthopaedics, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, and Professor Zhang Yuqing from Harvard University teamed up to publish the important research results in the clinical prevention of osteoarthritis, entitled "Association of Tramadol With All-Cause Mortality Among Patients With Osteoarthritis" in JAMA (IF 47.661) as an Original Investigation. Dr. Zeng Chao, an orthopaedic surgeon and associate researcher at Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, is the sole first author of the paper, Professor Lei Guanghua and Professor Zhang Yuqing are co-corresponding authors of the paper, and Xiangya Hospital of Central South University is the first completion unit.
Osteoarthritis is the most common joint degenerative disease, with the prevalence in Chinese people aged 40 and over of up to 46.3%. Tramadol is the most commonly used weak opioid analgesic in the clinic, and has been recommended as the first-line treatment drug for osteoarthritis by many internationally authoritative diagnosis and treatment guidelines for osteoarthritis. This real-world study found for the first time that tramadol may cause an increase of 70%-104% in all-cause mortality in patients with osteoarthritis compared to the commonly used non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (naproxen, diclofenac, celecoxib, and etocoxib). The results of this study will have an important impact on the guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of osteoarthritis at home and abroad.
Professor Lei Guanghua has been committed to the clinical prevention and research on the pathogenesis of osteoarthritis, and has published more than 100 research papers in internationally renowned journals. The team took the lead in conducting epidemiological studies on osteoarthritis in China's mountainous areas, and established a large sample-size natural population cohort to identify some risk factors for osteoarthritis in China, providing an important basis for clinical prevention and treatment of osteoarthritis. Real-world studies, randomized controlled trials, and systematic reviews were conducted to explore the efficacy and safety of a variety of treatments for osteoarthritis. Some of the results have been written into the European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) guidelines for osteoarthritis. Through basic and translational medicine research, a new drug candidate for the treatment of osteoarthritis has been preliminarily developed. The team invites bioinformatics and osteoarthritis-related basic research PI to join (lei_guanghua@csu.edu.cn).
Link to the paper:https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2727448
Source: Xiangya Hospital
