Rosehip treatment tackles arthritis

ROSEHIPS may provide an effective alternative treatment for sufferers of crippling rheumatoid arthritis, research suggests.
Severely affected patients already being treated with conventional drugs experienced significant improvement after taking capsules of rosehip powder for six months.

Experts want to conduct more extensive trials which could form the basis of clinical guidelines.
Scientists said the rosehip remedy, LitoZin, may help to reduce NHS spending on expensive new drugs.
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a painful and debilitating auto-immune disease which affects about 400,000 people in the UK, 4,000 of them seriously. It occurs when the immune system attacks the joints, causing swelling and damage to cartilage and bone.

Traditional treatments have only limited effectiveness.

Newer medicines, including TNF Alpha inhibitors and the latest "smart" drugs that target various parts of the immune system, can cost as much as £10,000 a year.
Scientists who conducted the trial in Copenhagen and Berlin said they were surprised by the results, since RA is a far more serious and challenging disease than osteo-arthritis.
A total of 89 mostly female patients with an average age of 57 were recruited, all seriously affected by RA, which they had suffered for more than 18 years.
The patients were asked to fill in questionnaires to assess pain and the ability to carry out everyday tasks.
After six months, activity levels improved by 20-25 per cent for those taking LitoZin. The number of joints causing pain and discomfort fell by 40 per cent, but did not change for patients treated conventionally without the rosehip supplement.