Last week during the arthritis discussion we analyzed an article that tested the effects of the drug Diacerin on osteoarthritic cells. The drug is unique because it inhibits interleukin-1 rather than acting on the cyclooxygenase enzymes like non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs do. However, this particular study only looked at chondrocytes in vitro and was not a human study. It got me wondering if there have been any human clinical studies on this drug and if it has any negative health effects. I found this article:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/art.23056/pdf
Looks like they found Diacerin to be safe and well tolerated. No serious or
previously undocumented adverse events were observed
during the study. I'm interested to see where this drug will go in the future.
From what I found, it seems that diacerein is a safer alternative therapy for osteoarthritis for people who can’t take NSAID. However, according to this meta-analysis study of six trials and 1533 patients, diacerein is associated with increase risk of diarrhea.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.oarsijournal.com/article/S1063-4584%2809%2900278-7/abstract
In this study, it also noted that the predominate adverse side effect was “transient change in bowel habits.” Other than that the only side effects were non significant discoloration of urine and a slight increase 7% compared to 3% in placebo of patients having rash or pruritis. Overall, seem pretty safe to me!
http://www.jkscience.org/archive/Volume83/diaceren.pdf