Jab in your BOTTOM to ease a painful hip joint

AJAB in the buttocks could be a new way to banish hip pain caused by osteoarthritis. A single steroid injection into the muscles in the bottom gave volunteers pain relief for up to 12 weeks in a trial in the Netherlands.

This matched the duration of relief seen with standard steroid injections directly into the affected joint.

The problem with these is that they can be painful and normally have to be administered by a specialist in hospital, using X-ray or ultrasound images to make sure the steroid is targeted at the most damaged part of the hip.

The big advantage of a buttock jab is it’s less painful (as the injection goes into muscle, which is softer) and easier to perform, so they can be given by GPs in their surgery.

An estimated nine million people in Britain have some degree of osteoarthritis. As the body ages, major joints such as the hips, knees and wrists suffer wear and tear.

Other risk factors include being overweight, having a family history of the condition and sports injuries.

Normally, cartilage absorbs the impact from walking, running or lifting, so bones do not rub together. But in osteoarthritis, the cartilage starts to break down and as bones come into contact, the friction makes them swollen and extremely painful. MANY arthritis patients rely on anti-inflammatory painkillers. However, while these help, they can damage the stomach lining if used for a long time, potentially leading to stomach ulcers and internal bleeding

More than 100,000 people a year in England alone end up having hip replacement surgery on the NHS because their joints are so badly eroded.

Steroid injections are widely used to dampen down inflammation in the joint that causes excruciating pain. But they often have to be repeated because the effects wear off after a few months.

Smaller joints such as wrists and knees can be injected by a GP under a local anaesthetic. But injecting larger joints such as hips is more complex and carries a small risk of septic arthritis — an infection in the joint.

Researchers at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam recruited 107 patients with painful hip arthritis. Half were given a dummy jab containing salt water into the buttocks.

The other half were injected with 40mg of triamcinolone acetate, a type of steroid widely used on the NHS.

The average pain rating, on a scale of one to ten, was 4.3 before the injections. After two weeks, the rating by those given the steroid jab had dropped to 2.6, compared with 3.9 in the placebo group. They enjoyed 12 pain-free weeks until their scores increased.

Researcher Dr Desiree Dorleijn said the next step is to see if the technique of injecting muscles rather than joints could benefit other parts of the body affected by cartilage destruction.

Dr Fraser Birrell, a consultant rheumatologist from the charity Arthritis Care, was part of a team that pioneered hip injections of steroids. Commenting on the new research, he said: ‘This is an interesting study. It’s the first to show injecting the muscle can be effective for up to 12 weeks.

‘We have to be cautious until the full results are published in a medical journal. But if the findings are replicated in another study it would certainly become an option for patients.’

MEANWHILE, a vaccine to treat osteoarthritis is a step closer thanks to a breakthrough using stem cells.

Scientists at Washington University ‘rewired’ stem cells taken from the tails of mice, removing a key gene that causes inflammation, and replacing it with a gene that releases a natural drug to combat inflammation.

It’s hoped this drug will eventually be able to replace arthritic cartilage and also protect other joints from damage.