Pain due to knee joint arthritis initially begins with activities like climbing stairs or after long walking. The progression of the disease cause more pain with less activities even during resting or night time sleeping. Knee locking, swelling and giving way begin to be the associated problems to the pain. In the severe and progressed form, knee joint arthritis obligates the individual to use pain killer medication every day and severely limits daily activities and interrupts social activities of the patient.

The incidence of knee cartilage degeneration was formerly reported as less than 2 % before age 35, whereas the recent investigations revealed that this ratio reached to 8 % or more. The most important factors for this increment is probably the uncontrolled sporting and obesity. The medical admission is important when the first signs of knee joint degeneration is realized since progression of the disease makes the treatment more difficult and in severe cases, surgical intervention may be required.

The knee joint arthritis may be primary or secondary. In the "primary group" there is no known and defined underlying cause of arthritis and it is also called as "idiopathic". Most of the knee joint degeneration falls into this group. In the "secondary group" there is an underlying cause like rheumatoid arthritis, trauma or skeletal malformations and deformations. If detected early, correction of the underlying cause can be efficient for prevention of the knee cartilage degeneration. In the primary group, genetic factors, aging, obesity, uncontrolled sport activities and weak knee musculature are the main proposed factors for the development of knee cartilage degeneration.

The treatment of arthritis depends on the severity of the disease, age of the patient and whether there is an underlying pathology or not. In the early stages of the disease weigth loss, activity limitation and pain killer medication is effective. Also supplementary medications like glucosamine-chondroitin may also be effective for the relief of symptoms.