Arthritis News, Articles, & Information

Glucosamine is an amino-sugar that is a major component of joint cartilage. It is thought that glucosamine can help rebuild cartilage and reduce inflammation, making it an effective treatment for osteoarthritis. While some studies have found glucosamine effective for the treatment of osteoarthritis, other studies have not found a link between glucosamine and osteoarthritis.

Probably the largest clinical study of glucosamine’s effectiveness was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is an agency of the US Department of Health and Human Services, and involved a 6 month trial where osteoarthritis patients received one of five treatments. The treatments were glucosamine supplementation, chondroitin supplementation, a combination of both, a NSAID used for treating arthritis called celecoxib, or a placebo.

The researchers found that neither glucosamine nor chondroitin reduced arthritis pain compared to the placebo, however a subgroup of the patients did experience a statistically significant benefit from taking both supplements.

A separate study called “Glucosamine and chondroitin for treatment of osteoarthritis: A systematic quality assessment and meta-analysis” which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2000 and involved analyzing data from a large number of clinical trials concluded that “Trials of glucosamine and chondroitin preparations for OA symptoms demonstrate moderate to large effects, but quality issues and likely publication bias suggest that these effects are exaggerated. Nevertheless, some degree of efficacy appears probable for these preparations.”

A third study published in the Lancet, a British medical journal, found that in a trial involving 212 individuals with osteoarthritis, symptoms improved by 20 to 25 percent in the glucosamine group compared to a slight worsening of symptoms in the control group. Furthermore x-ray examinations of patients showed that the glucosamine group had reduced narrowing of the knee-join space, an indicator of osteoarthritis progression, when compared to the control group.

Benefits to osteoarthritis sufferers from glucosamine are thought to come through one of two mechanisms. First, through glucosamine’s anti-inflammatory action that can help reduce the pain associated with arthritis, and secondly, by stimulating the production of both proteoglycans and collagen, which are both essential elements of healthy cartilage.

Despite conflicting claims on the effectiveness of glucosamine, it has an excellent safety profile and with very few side-effects, even with long term use at high doses, it is probably worth a try for osteoarthritis sufferers.