Taking oral glucosamine sulphate and chondroitin sulphate could be a safe and effective way of treating knee osteoarthritis, report a team of Belgian and French researchers.
A major review of randomised, placebo-controlled clinical trials published or performed between January 1980 and March 2002 found that both supplements had significant effects on joint space narrowing.
The researchers used Medline, Premedline, Embase, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Current Contents, BIOSIS Previews, HealthSTAR, EBM Reviews, manual review of the literature and congressional abstracts, and direct contact with the authors and manufacturers of glucosamine and chondroitin to perform the research, published in this month's Archives of Internal Medicine.
There was a "a highly significant efficacy of glucosamine on all outcomes", said the researchers, including the Lequesne Index, Western Ontario MacMaster University Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC) and tests for pain, mobility and safety. Safety was "excellent" for both compounds.
"Our study demonstrates the structural efficacy of glucosamine and indistinguishable symptomatic efficacies for both compounds," the researchers concluded.
They added that the data on glucosamine and joint space narrowing is sparse and there is little data on structural effects of chondroitin, so further studies are needed to before an accurate dose can be determine for the two supplements.