Karl Rudolphi

Osteoarthritis — an untreatable disease?

Osteoarthritis is a painful and disabling disease that affects millions of patients. Its aetiology is largely unknown, but is most likely multi-factorial. Osteoarthritis poses a dilemma: it often begins attacking different joint tissues long before middle age, but cannot be diagnosed until it becomes symptomatic decades later, at which point structural alterations are already quite advanced. In this review, osteoarthritis is considered as a disease of the whole joint that may result from multiple pathophysiological mechanisms, one of which is the dysregulation of lipid homeostasis. No proven disease-modifying therapy exists for osteoarthritis and current treatment options for chronic osteoarthritic pain are insufficient, but new pharmacotherapeutic options are emerging.

An anthology from Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archives of pharmacology

Otto Schaumann (1891–1977) studied chemistry at the University of Vienna. He got his Ph.D. in 1914 and spent a post-doctorate at the Institute of Pharmacology under Hans Horst Meyer. From 1925–1946, he worked as head of a pharmacological laboratory at Farbwerke Hoechst, Frankfurt/ Main-Hochst (Fig. 1). In 1941, he wrote a habilitation thesis in medicine. Schaumann discovered the analgesic effects of Dolantin® (pethidine, meperidine) that was synthesized in 1932 as a potentially spasmolytic agent by the medicinal chemist Otto Eisleb (1887–1948) at Farbwerke Hoechst. He profiled the compound preclinically but, interestingly enough, also accompanied the clinical development of pethidine closely until and beyond its first launch as a parenteral injectable formulation in 1939 and the following launches as suppositories and drops in 1942, thus, already practicing translational science. Together with the pharmacologist Ernst Lindner, he was also involved in the discovery and the development of methadon (Polamidon® and LPolamidon®), synthesized by medicinal chemist Gustav Erhart at the Hoechst laboratories. Schaumann was, what seems to be today an endangered species, namely a “classical” experienced in vitro and in vivo pharmacologist, combining an excellent knowledge of systemic physiology, pathophysiology, and medicinal chemistry. In 1945, Schaumann left the company and worked from 1946–1962 as director of the Institute of Pharmacognosia in the Faculty of Philosophy and Natural Sciences at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. From his new position in Innsbruck, he still was very active in the further profiling of pethidine. Besides his scientific publications on analgesics, he also published articles on ephedrine, local anesthetics, hypophyseal hormones, and on the importance of an optimal pain reduction for a successful medical recovery (Heilanalgesie). In 1956, he also published a monograph on morphine and its derivatives (Schaumann 1957).