Prof. van Schaardenburg says his team plans to publish a full extension study by the end of the year. He hopes patients show continued adherence and medication declines, which would provide momentum toward applying plant-based diets to rheumatology protocols. His team has established the Plants for Health program online, explaining their work and soliciting patients and health professionals.
Are advocates of such diets moving too fast? Plant-based diets are characterized by high levels of fiber and low levels of saturated fat, classifying them as low inflammatory, according to the researchers.
Plant-based diets have become more mainstream recently, but Dr. Sammut says this type of trend is not new. “Before this, we had [attention focused on] the Mediterranean diet,” she says.
Dr. Sammut would welcome verified programs suggesting combined lifestyle changes. But she believes the field needs to see much more evidence before she feels comfortable advising rheumatologists to regularly recommend plant-based diets. Rheumatologists are not nutritionists, she says, suggesting patients work with nutritionists too. In addition, she says, “I don’t think there’s one diet that works well for everyone.”
Dr. Sammut wants to catch patients with MSOA earlier, to educate them and help them make lifestyle changes before joint damage occurs. She also called for researchers to examine more comparison groups when studying plant-based diets, comparing specific diets against each other, with the diet being the only difference between groups.
Regardless of any new data that emerge from future studies, she says it will still be tough to get patients to follow the Plants for Health program consistently on their own: Nothing “would have me tell patients to eat foods they’re never going to eat,” she says, noting many of her patients simply cannot afford to consume this diet.
But Dr. Sammut credited Prof. van Schaardenburg and his team for their work. Osteoarthritis trials are difficult to conduct, she says. “Where we are right now is just not good enough, so I really applaud anyone who is studying osteoarthritis.”
Ryan Basen is a journalist, writer and editor in Washington, D.C.
References
- Osteoarthritis—Level 3 cause. Global Burden of Disease Collaborative Network. Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. 2019. https://www.healthdata.org/results/gbd_summaries/2019/osteoarthritis-level-3-cause.
- Walrabenstein W, Wagenaar CA, van de Put M, et al. A multidisciplinary lifestyle program for metabolic syndrome-associated osteoarthritis: The ‘Plants for Joints’ randomized controlled trial. Osteoarthr Cartil Open. 2023 Nov;31(11):1491–1500.
- Walrabenstein W, Wagenaar CA, van der Leeden M, et al. A multidisciplinary lifestyle program for rheumatoid arthritis: The ‘Plants for Joints’ randomized controlled trial. Rheumatology (Oxford). 2023 Aug 1; 62(8):2683–2691.
