Table 1.
Prescription drugs and frequency * for the treatment of osteoarthritis in outpatient Clinics from 2004 to 2008.
| Medications ‡ | Years (n/p: total number of prescriptions) | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2004 (n/p = 204,114) |
2005 (n/p = 195,142) |
2006 (n/p = 248,268) |
2007 (n/p = 256,048) |
2008 (n/p = 278,511) |
||||||
| n | (%) | n | (%) | n | (%) | n | (%) | n | (%) | |
| Glucosamine sulfate | 4461 | (2.2) | 4419 | (2.3) | 4265 | (1.7) | 4176 | (1.6) | 4326 | (1.6) |
| Corticosteroids | 2050 | (1.0) | 1971 | (1.0) | 2321 | (0.9) | 2519 | (1.0) | 2437 | (0.9) |
| Paracetamol | 2901 | (1.4) | 3022 | (1.5) | 3138 | (1.3) | 3099 | (1.2) | 3167 | (1.1) |
| Opioids | 137 | (0.1) | 78 | (0.0) | 213 | (0.1) | 488 | (0.2) | 754 | (0.3) |
| NSAIDs † | 23,977 | (11.7) | 24,427 | (12.5) | 25,448 | (10.3) | 26,340 | (10.3) | 26,134 | (9.4) |
* Total prescription drugs were obtained from the National Health Insurance Research Database, and data at the end of 2008 are presented. ‡ All of these medications may also possibly be prescribed for other kinds of diseases. Therefore, we excluded all the other numbers of prescriptions which are not under the diagnosis of osteoarthritis (International Classification of Disease (ICD)-9-CM: 715). † The percentage of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) prescriptions is higher than for the other medications.