A new and powerful anti-inflammatory drug has the potential to slow down arthritis. There's just one caveat though, it is expensive.

The study, published Tuesday online in the Annals of Internal Medicine revealed that the drug canakinumab, also known as Ilaris, usually used in treating rare rheumatic conditions characterised by widespread inflammation such as juvenile idiopathic arthritis, may be promising in easing age-related arthritis, including osteoarthritis.

Dr Paul Ridker, a Eugene Braunwald Professor of Medicine at the Harvard Medical School and the senior researcher of the study, stated that the data used was derived from a large trial. The result pointed to a "potential new pathway in the treatment of osteoarthritis."

The findings of Dr Ridker and team were based on a clinical trial of more than 10,000 people, all of whom suffered from a heart attack, U.S. News and World Report revealed. The initial aim of the researchers was to prevent participants from having another heart attack by taking the drug canakinumab along with their medications. The drug was given to half of the participants, and the other half had the placebo. Those who received the drug took it via injection once every quarter.

In a span of four years, the researchers discovered that the patients who received the drug had a lower risk of needing a possible joint replacement surgery. The risk was reduced by 40 to 47 percent as compared to the placebo group.

The interesting part of the study, funded by Ilaris-maker Novartis, was that it was designed to test the efficacy of the drug in preventing another heart attack in people deemed high-risk, and was not meant to test it for the treatment of osteoarthritis. The discovery of the drug's benefit to patients suffering from the inflammatory disease was incidental.

Dr. Nancy Lane, a co-author of the study, and a professor and arthritis researcher at the University of California, Davis, said that the results of the study were "groundbreaking." While the clinical trial did not directly evaluate the drug against arthritis, the reduction in joint replacement was already a major development.

Drug for arthritis Drug for arthritis
Drug for arthritis Photo: Pixabay

In the event that canakinumab will be proven effective in preventing the possibility of a joint replacement, it could help answer practical concerns surrounding its huge price tag. At present, one shot of the drug costs thousands of dollars, a cost deemed high for limited use.