Intra-articular drug delivery for osteoarthritis treatment

Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most prevalent degenerative joint disease affecting millions of people worldwide. Currently, clinical nonsurgical treatments of OA are only limited to pain relief, anti-inflammation, and viscosupplementation. Developing disease-modifying OA drugs (DMOADs) is highly demanded for the efficient treatment of OA. As OA is a local disease, intra-articular (IA) injection directly delivers drugs to synovial joints, resulting in high-concentration drugs in the joint and reduced side effects, accompanied with traditional oral or topical administrations. However, the injected drugs are rapidly cleaved. By properly designing the drug delivery systems, prolonged retention time and targeting could be obtained. In this review, we summarize the drugs investigated for OA treatment and recent advances in the IA drug delivery systems, including micro-and nano-particles, liposomes, and hydrogels, hoping to provide some information for designing the IA injected formulations.