Background. Guilu Erxian Jiao (GEJ) is a widely used Chinese herbal remedy for knee osteoarthritis, but its clinical efficacy is\nunknown. Methods.We enrolled 42 elderly male patients with knee OA, including 21 patients who received the herbal drug GEJ as\nthe case group and 21 patients who did not receive GEJ as the control group. The effects of 12 weeks of GEJ treatment on muscle\nstrength of lower limbs were measured by a Biodex dynamometer, with disability evaluated on the Lequesne index and articular\npain measured on the visual analog scale (VAS) between the two groups on the baseline and after treatment. Results.There were\nsignificant increases in the levels of muscle strength of TQ/BW-ext-dominant and TQ/BW-flex-dominant between the two groups\nafter treatment (P < 0.05). There were also significant increases in muscle strength of knee extensor muscles in the GEJ-treated\ngroup (P = 21) self-controlled before and after 12 weeks of treatment (all P < 0.01). There were significant decreases in articular\npain (P < 0.01) and Lequesne index scores (P < 0.01) in the GEJ-treated group when compared to the non-GEJ-treated group.\nConclusions. Our results showed that GEJ is effective and is tolerated well in elderly men with knee OA.
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