TOPLINE

Patients with knee osteoarthritis (OA) who used a topical flurbiprofen patch alongside oral celecoxib reported faster pain relief and better short-term function than those who used celecoxib alone.

METHODOLOGY

• Researchers conducted an open-label randomized controlled trial to assess whether adding a topical flurbiprofen patch to oral celecoxib sped up symptom relief in patients with knee OA.
• The final analysis included 89 patients with primary knee OA (mean age, 55.4 years; 66.3% women) treated at a Chinese tertiary hospital between January 2024 and March 2025.
• Patients were randomly assigned to receive either 200 mg of oral celecoxib once daily (n = 45) or a combination of 200 mg celecoxib once daily and a 40-mg flurbiprofen patch applied to the affected knee according to manufacturer's instructions (n = 44), with both treatments administered for 14 days.
• The primary outcomes were pain measured using a 0-10 visual analog scale (VAS), with higher scores indicating more severe pain, and function assessed using the Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC), with higher scores indicating greater impairment; both were assessed at baseline and on days 3, 7, and 14.
• Secondary outcomes included health-related quality of life measured using a 36-item health survey and overall improvement assessed using a patient global assessment scale.

TAKEAWAY

• Patients who received combination therapy vs celecoxib alone had a 1.4-point greater reduction in the mean VAS score on day 3 (P < .01) and a 0.6-point greater reduction on day 7 (P = .02), with no significant difference at day 14.
• Patients who received combination therapy vs celecoxib alone had an 11.6-point greater reduction in WOMAC at day 3, a 10.1-point greater reduction at day 7, and a 9.5-point greater reduction at day 14 (P < .01 for all).
• At day 14, patients who received combination therapy reported greater global improvement and higher scores in some domains of health-related quality of life than those who received celecoxib alone.

IN PRACTICE

"[The] findings support the combination regimen as a short-term 'bridging' strategy to reduce early activity limitation and potentially facilitate timely initiation of non-pharmacological rehabilitation in symptomatic KOA [knee OA]," the authors of the study wrote.

SOURCE

The study was led by Kaibo Sun, West China Hospital of Sichuan University in Chengdu, Sichuan, China. It was published online on September 9, 2026, in Rheumatology.

LIMITATIONS

The study was open-label and did not include a placebo patch. The 14-day follow-up was insufficient to assess medium- or long-term outcomes. The sample size did not support robust subgroup analyses.

DISCLOSURES

The study received support from the Science and Technology Department of Sichuan Province, the Postdoctoral Research Fund of West China Hospital at Sichuan University, the Key Research Project of Science and Technology Department of Sichuan Province, and the Science and Technology Projects of Xizang Autonomous Region. The authors did not declare any conflicts of interest.

This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.