With sales reaching more than $700 million a year, makers of supplements glucosamine and chrondroitin sulfate have not been hurting.
But do the supplements relieve arthritis pain?
Depends on how you view the data from a big NIH study, presented last week at the American College of Rheumatology meeting, and reported in the Washington Post.
The principal investigator said, "The first take-home message is that in the overall study population, none of the supplements were better than placebo."
The Post reports that supplement industry folks are taking solace in one aspect of the study. "When researchers looked at the 20 percent of participants with moderate to severe pain, they found that 79 percent of those taking a combination of the supplements experienced pain relief, compared with 69 percent of those who took Celebrex and 54 percent of those who took placebo. The combination was also better than either supplement alone."
The Post quoted one rheumatologist trying to put this in perspective: ""It is encouraging that glucosamine and chondroitin seem to help some people who have a significant knee disease -- it's something to consider -- but to think that it has replaced anything or works better across the board wouldn't be correct."
Posted by schwitz at November 22, 2005 10:17 AM | TrackBack