Efficacy and safety of curcuminoids alone in alleviating pain and dysfunction for knee osteoarthritis: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

Feng J, Li Z, Tian L, Mu P, Hu Y, Xiong F, Ma X · BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies

Against placebo, curcuminoids alone improved pain VAS by 1.77 points (95% CI -2.44 to -1.09) and total WOMAC by 7.06 (95% CI -12.27 to -1.84), were not inferior to NSAIDs, and did not raise adverse events (RR 1.03 vs placebo).

Population

15 RCTs restricted to curcuminoids given alone, in knee osteoarthritis

Intervention

Curcuminoids as monotherapy

Comparator

Placebo or NSAIDs

Limitations

The authors restrict to curcuminoid-only interventions to remove co-intervention noise but then describe the pooled trials as low quality with substantial heterogeneity, and make only a cautious and conservative recommendation.