BACKGROUND:At present,modern medical treatment has certain limitations on the treatment of knee osteoarthritis.Traditional Chinese medicine alkaloids can effectively prevent and treat knee osteoarthritis through various mechanisms. OBJECTIVE:To review the mechanism of alkaloids in traditional Chinese medicine in the prevention and treatment of knee osteoarthritis,providing a scientific basis for the clinical development of drugs for the treatment of knee osteoarthritis. METHODS:CNKI,WanFang,PubMed,Web of Science and Google Scholar were retrieved for relevant literature published from database inception to May 2024.The key words were"knee osteoarthritis""osteoarthritis""osteoclast""chondrocyte""alkaloids"in Chinese and English.Duplicates and obsolete non-referenced literature were excluded,and a total of 68 eligible papers were included for further review. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION:Although traditional Chinese medicine has a long history of treating knee osteoarthritis,only a small number of natural compounds are in the preclinical stage of research against knee osteoarthritis.Alkaloids have a greater potential for the prevention and treatment of knee osteoarthritis,among which,sophocarpidine,oxymatrine,sinomenine,and betaine have been shown to be effective in the prevention and treatment of knee osteoarthritis by modulating multiple signaling pathways.Alkaloids can delay the progression of knee osteoarthritis by inhibiting inflammatory response,exerting antioxidant response,inhibiting chondrocyte apoptosis,promoting chondrocyte proliferation,and inhibiting osteoclast formation and differentiation.