USA: Vital Signs Nostrums - Supplements Seem to Be No Help to Knees

. NEW YORK, NY / The New York Times / October 21, 2008 By Nicholas Bakalar In 2006, researchers reported that the widely used diet supplements glucosamine and chondroitin were no more effective against osteoarthritis than a placebo, except for a small benefit in some people with arthritis of the knee. Now a new study suggests that the substances may be ineffective for them, too. In that two-year study, researchers examined 581 knees in 357 people with osteoarthritis. They divided them into five groups to receive either glucosamine, chondroitin sulfate, the two together, celecoxib (an anti-inflammatory drug) or a sugar pill; neither the researchers nor the subjects knew who was taking what. Then they used X-rays to measure the deterioration of their knee joints. The study, published in the October issue of Arthritis and Rheumatism, found no significant difference between any of the four treatments and the placebo. No treatment achieved a clinically important improvement, and the disease progressed at the same rate in all groups. Still, Dr. Allen D. Sawitzke, the lead author and an associate professor of medicine at the University of Utah, said that further study might still find some benefit. “Our sample is too small, our time frame too short, and the technical limitations of our measuring are too great to exclude small effects,” he said. “But if the effect were large,” he continued, “we would have caught it.” Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company