What medications are available for arthritis? What are the medications used to treat osteoarthritis? Patients with osteoarthritis of the knee who do not have severe initial symptoms can usually manage their symptoms without pain with non-pharmacological treatment. However, for patients in the middle stage, there is often pain and they need to resort to medication for pain relief. Do I have to use pain medication to stop the pain? The answer is no. Pain is only an incidental manifestation of the development of osteoarthritis. Although pain relief is the most direct and fastest, if pain is simply relieved, that is, if narcotic analgesics alone are used without diagnosing the inflammation or other pathological changes in the joint for treatment, the pain will not be resolved at the root, and once the narcotic analgesics are withdrawn, the pain in the joint will return again. Is it okay to refuse pain medication? In clinical practice, many patients refuse to use pain medication, thinking that pain medication is not good and they should not take it if they can. In fact, this is a wrong idea. Why do you say so? There are two types of pain medications, one is anti-inflammatory and one is narcotic. Anti-inflammatory analgesic drugs can reduce the inflammation in the joint, reduce the fluid, swelling, congestion, and the pain secondary to these phenomena, so anti-inflammatory analgesic drugs can be said to be a “cure”. However, the analgesic effect of NSAIDs alone is not very strong, and for many moderate to severe pains, the use of anti-inflammatory analgesics alone is not possible, and narcotic analgesics are needed at the same time, such as the opioid tramadol. The simultaneous use of both can enhance the efficacy and reduce the dosage of each drug. Some patients have misconceptions about opioids and refuse to use them, resulting in poor pain control and a persistent stress response in the body that causes a series of adverse effects, such as cardiovascular complications. What are the medications used to treat osteoarthritis? Drugs for osteoarthritis are divided into four major categories, including topical joint medications, systemic analgesics, intra-articular injectable medications, and medications to improve the condition. 1.Local joint medication: emulsions, creams and patches of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs can effectively relieve mild to moderate joint pain and have mild adverse effects. 2, systemic analgesics: acetaminophen, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, opioids. 3.Joint cavity injection drugs: sodium hyaluronate, glucocorticoids. 4, improve the condition of drugs and chondroprotective agents: diacerein, glucosamine, chondroitin sulfate, doxycycline, etc.