New research confirms:
Prolotherapy Yes, cortisone No
Significant improvement in sacroiliac pain revealed In Korean study by Ross Hauser, MD
Another reason to say "no" to cortisone!

In reviewing the Prolotherapy research - almost every published Prolotherapy study that revealed significant pain improvement results was either using traditional Hackett-Hemwall Prolotherapy and/or dextrose Prolotherapy. All one has to do examine all of the human Prolotherapy studies ever done and it will be clear that the most effective scientifically proven method (at least to this point) is Hackett-Hemwall dextrose Prolotherapy. Certainly the 10 studies we have published confirm that! Click here to read any or all of those studies on our research website www.prolotherapy.org.
 

The latest dextrose Prolotherapy study was performed at Chonnam National University Hospital in Korea, a randomized controlled trial of intra-articular Prolotherapy versus steroid injection for sacroiliac pain. This study was done through the department of anesthesiology and pain medicine. The patients were confirmed to have Sacroiliac pain because each patient received a diagnostic block to the sacroiliac joint. In other words, the pain was blocked to that area and all of the patients experienced short term pain relief. All of the patients previously failed traditional medical therapy for long term pain relief, meaning they were considered “tough” sacroiliac pain problems. They each received either a steroid shot or dextrose Prolotherapy done under fluoroscopic guidance done biweekly for a maximum of three times.

As would be expected both the steroid and Prolotherapy group had significant pain relief at two weeks but at 15 months the difference reached statistical significance (at the 95% confidence level) with Prolotherapy giving statistically significantly more pain relief than the steroid group. If one looks carefully by using Kaplan-Meier analysis, the statistical significance difference between the groups was log-rank p<0.005. What does this mean? If a person has sacroiliac pain and you want long-term relief, you have a much greater chance of achieving it with dextrose Prolotherapy versus a steroid shot! Why? In my opinion, the reason is because Prolotherapy stimulates the repair of the injured sacroiliac ligaments.