Among patients with knee pain, those who take a widely used class of blood pressure-lowering medications called beta-blockers appear to have a lower risk of total knee arthroplasty (TKA) for the treatment of advanced osteoarthritis (OA), suggests a study. "Our results indicate that the use of β-blockers, especially nonselective blockers, was associated with a lower likelihood of TKA," according to the case-control study by Iskandar Tamimi, MD, Ph.D. and colleagues. Beta-blockers may slow the progression of OA by reducing inflammatory mediators involved in cartilage degeneration—which may provide clues to the development of new treatment approaches for OA. Researchers identified 300...