Date of Award

2026

Document Type

Capstone

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Physician Assistant Studies

Committee Chair

Trey Boyd

Abstract

Introduction: Osteoarthritis of the knee is one of the most common primary complaints in the US. Newer injectable therapies that target specific cartilage degeneration are being developed. The purpose of this review is to compare the efficacy of PRP and HA injections for the management of knee osteoarthritis.

Methods: PubMed was searched using the key terms “osteoarthritis of the knee,” “hyaluronic acid,” “platelet-rich plasma,” and “management of pain.” This search was refined using MeSH terms, Boolean operators, and applied filters (English, free full-text, publication date between 2020-2025). Four articles were selected for in-depth review of the efficacy of platelet-rich plasma and hyaluronic acid for knee osteoarthritis.

Results: Three studies were meta-analyses, and one study was a randomized controlled trial. Three studies focused primary endpoints of WOMAC total and WOMAC pain scores comparing PRP and HA injections. One study analyzed the WOMAC total and WOMAC pain scores comparing PRP, HA, PRGF, and ozone injection among participants in the randomized control trial. All four studies evaluated the safety of the selected injectables for analysis.

Discussion: Intra-articular PRP showed better overall outcomes in terms of WOMAC total scores and WOMAC pain scores compared with HA for patients with knee osteoarthritis at 6 and 12 months post-intervention. However, there were no differences at short-term follow-up between PRP and HA. Future studies can aim to specify formulation and concentration for standardization, as well as conduct more studies on HA due to the limited studies available in the current literature.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License

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