Saturday Quack - Again, Glucosamine Fails the Test

Glucosamine has received contradictory study results – sometimes it works in preventing or treating osteoarthritis pain, other times it doesn’t. Now a study claimed to be fairly definitive has been published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. This was a randomized controlled study done in the Netherlands , treating 222 patients with hip osteoarthritis.

The subjects were given either 1500 mg of glucosamine or placebo, once daily for 2 years. A well-recognized measure of assessment was used to score pain, function, and stiffness at intervals over the 2-year period. Twenty patients had hip replacements during the trial – 13 in the glucosamine and 7 in the control group.

At 24 months, pain scores and function scores were statistically similar in both glucosamine- and placebo-treated groups. Radiographic joint space narrowing were also the same in both groups at the end of the study.

The conclusion one must draw is that glucosamine in ‘adequate doses’ had no effect over 2 years on pain and function in hip osteoarthritis patients. But an editorialist in the same journal remarks that results from this and other trials are not definitive; we might add that individual patients have individual responses to such medications, so we don’t rule out (entirely) a beneficial effect of glucosamine in some people.