This 2025 placebo-controlled trial gave 80 adults with grade II to III knee osteoarthritis 100 mg a day of a standardised Boswellia serrata extract (SN13108F, Aflapin) or placebo for 180 days. Pain and function scores improved, MRI showed greater cartilage volume and thickness than placebo, and type II collagen breakdown markers fell.
Eighty adult men and women with Kellgren-Lawrence grade II to III knee osteoarthritis took either 100 mg a day of SN13108F, sold as Aflapin, or a matched placebo for 180 days. The team scored pain and function (WOMAC, visual analogue scale, Lequesne's Functional Index), timed a six-minute walk and a stair climb, scanned the knee joints by MRI after the trial, and measured blood and urine markers of inflammation and type II collagen breakdown, along with safety tests.
Compared with baseline and placebo, the extract group had lower WOMAC, pain and Lequesne scores and did better in the walk and stair tests. Post-trial MRI showed increased cartilage volume, cartilage thickness and joint space width against placebo. Serum hs-CRP, MMP-3, Fibulin-3 and a type II collagen breakdown peptide fell, as did urinary CTX-II, another fragment of type II collagen. Blood, urine and vital signs did not differ between groups.
This is one branded extract at one dose, 100 mg a day, in 80 people over six months. The trial measured MMP-3 and collagen fragments, not MMP13. The abstract does not say how many people finished, so dropout is unknown. A single trial needs repeating before its MRI result can be relied on, and its findings do not carry over to other boswellia extracts, other doses or any formula.
It looked at cartilage structure on MRI, not only at symptoms, and found lower markers of type II collagen breakdown in blood and urine. Those markers come from the same collagen MMP13 cuts, so they are the closest this trial comes to the MMP13 story, even though MMP13 was not measured.
In animal and lab studies, yes. AKBA, the lead boswellic acid, suppressed MMP13 in rats with chemically induced knee damage, and a frankincense extract lowered MMP13...
Type II collagen is the main collagen in joint cartilage. Collagen makes up about two-thirds of adult cartilage's dry mass, and type II is its principal molecule, woven...