There is currently no cure for osteoarthritis, and low-impact exercise is a popular treatment for managing disease symptoms.
A new study challenges the effectiveness of exercise in easing osteoarthritis symptoms.
Scientists believe their findings help remind doctors that there are other treatment options available for symptom relief and that ongoing exercise therapy may be needed.
Focusing on exercise in osteoarthritis treatment
For this study, researchers analyzed data from five previous reviews and 28 clinical control trials published up to November 2025 that studied the effects of exercise therapy on adults with osteoarthritis of the knee, hip, hand, shoulder, or ankle joint and that also reported one of the main study outcomes as self-reported pain and/or physical function.
“Exercise is universally recommended as first-line treatment for osteoarthritis and therefore the single most important conservative treatment,” Schleimer said. “However, its surrounding evidence is fragmented. Most trials evaluated one joint at a single time point, compared with a single alternative, and used different outcome scales or metrics.”
“As a result, clinicians have lacked a clear overview of: the magnitude of benefit on a common, interpretable scale; how durable those benefits are; whether effects differ by joint; how exercise compares with other treatment approaches,” he continued.