The study conducted at Slovakia's Comenius University School of Medicine selected 100 Slovakian adults with mild knee arthritis.
The participants were randomly assigned to either use 150 milligrams of pine bark extract or placebo.
Researchers found that those participants who were given placebo showed no improvement for their knee arthritis problem as compared to participants who used the pine bark extract for 3 months.
During the three-month supplementation, arthritis pain and joint function were surveyed biweekly. The final survey was conducted four weeks after cessation of supplementation.
They found that the joint pain was reduced by 40.3 percent at three months of supplementation with Pycnogenol and by 36.1 percent two weeks after discontinvuation of using the medication. Moreover after stopping the pine bark extract treatment, the pain relief effect, still seemed to be intact for an additional 2 weeks.
The study is published in the journal Phytotherapy Research and was funded by Switzerland-based Horphag Research Limited, maker of Pycnogenol.
