Nutraceuticals Gain Favor for Treatment of Osteoarthritis

ORLANDO, FLA. — Dismissed a decade ago as “snake oil,” glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate have gained respect as treatments for osteoarthritis, Dr. David Hungerford, said at a symposium on hip and knee arthroplasty sponsored by the Current Concepts Institute.

These nutritional supplements are safe and chondroprotective, said Dr. Hungerford, an orthopedic surgeon at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.

A 1999 study that followed 199 patients being treated for osteoarthritis of the hand found that, over 3 years, 8% of those who took chondroitin sulfate developed new joint lesions as compared to 29% of the control group.

A 2-year study published in 2001 examined the radiographic outcomes of 210 patients with knee osteoarthritis.

Patients taking chondroitin sulfate showed no joint changes, while those on placebo showed significant joint space narrowing.

Another 2-year, placebo-controlled study published in 2001 found that patients who had knee osteoarthritis and took glucosamine experienced increased function, less pain, and less joint-space narrowing than patients who did not take the supplement.

Dr. Hungerford offered one caveat to these findings: The chondroitin and glucosamine products used in clinical studies contain optimum amounts of the active ingredients. Among nutritional supplements available to consumers, it can be difficult to find a brand that contains the optimum amount of active ingredients.

A recent study of 32 brands of glucosamine showed that 17 had less than 50% of the level of active ingredients claimed on the label and that some of those brands had no active ingredient at all.

“It's important to guide patients to products whose ingredients have been thoroughly tested,” he said.