GEKO is going to test a new treatment that may relieve knee osteoarthritis pain by blocking (embolisation) small extra blood vessels around the knee using micro-beads. This is thought to also reduce the number of extra nerves causing pain because the extra nerves will not have a blood supply in comparison with a very similar placebo, which only injects saline water.
The study is a pragmatic multi-centre, two arm, parallel design, superiority, randomised controlled clinical study. The study will be conducted in 216 adult patients from at least 12 hospitals in Great Britain, with moderate knee osteoarthritis (whose disease is not yet severe enough to need a knee replacement). Participants will be individually randomised (1:1) during the GEKO procedure, to receive either the blood vessel blocking treatment or the placebo, and they will not know which treatment they receive (this is called a ‘blinded’ study). Each participant will be followed up for 12 months to determine if there is any change in their knee pain or function. Additionally, we will use imaging techniques to look inside the knee to help understand how the treatment affects pain and what might be happening within the knee itself.
For more information, please see here:
Closing the treatment gap in knee osteoarthritis — the GEKO trial begins