Recent advances in natural product-based drug delivery systems for the treatment of osteoarthritis

Osteoarthritis (OA), as the most common degenerative joint disease in the global aging society, is harmful but has no specific treatment. Its pathological mechanism involves multiple factors such as oxidative stress, inflammatory imbalance, cartilage metabolic disorders and abnormal subchondral bone remodeling. In recent years, more and more natural products extracted from plants have been used in experimental research and even clinical treatment of OA. Natural products have shown unique advantages in OA treatment due to their multi-targeting and low toxicity, but their clinical application is limited by low bioavailability, poor joint targeting and rapid metabolic clearance. In recent years, drug delivery systems have provided new solutions to break through these bottlenecks, significantly enhancing the efficacy of natural products in OA therapy. In this paper, we discuss the mechanism of natural products in the treatment of OA and their drug delivery systems, with a view to providing assistance for further research and application of natural products.