Wang et al.: Drug Utilization Patterns for Osteoarthritis in a Chinese Province The study was conducted to evaluate the prescription patterns of various agents for osteoarthritis in a population specific cohort in Shandong Province, China. Data obtained from the Hospital Databases, which consisted of electronic medical records and prescription information. All the enrolled study subjects (n=212 546) are with a clinically detected osteoarthritis during 2010-2015. Medicine prescription pattern was demonstrated using medication possession ratio, corresponding number of days administered with that particular medicine. The drugs examined comprised of analgesics (metamizole and paracetamol), oral and topical non-steroidal antiinflammatory drugs, cyclooxygenase-2 inhibitors, opioids (fentanyl and tramadol) and symptomatic slow-acting drugs in osteoarthritis. The most generally employed regimen for