Poorly Designed Glucosamine Study Impacts Effectiveness

[GhostModder]

A study released today suggests that glucosamine may not play a role in easing the pain of arthritis, especially in the hips. According to an article on Yahoo's HealthDay news, the specific results of this study will be published in Annals of Internal Medicine (February 19th edition).

The double-blind randomized study included 222 subjects who had mild to moderate osteoarthritis of the hip. The HealthDay article says for two years these subjects took 1500 mg of glucosamine daily or placebo.

According to study author Rianne Rozendaal, who was quoted in the HealthDay article, "For these patients with hip osteoarthritis, glucosamine sulfate does not seem to be an effective treatment on the basis of our results."

Dr. Johannes W.J. Bijlsma, who was also quoted by HealthDay, disagreed with that conclusion. "The study is not definitive. This is the first one specifically on hip osteoarthritis, and only subgroups of patients improved. So, no confirmation, but no refuting either."

Dr. ***** Theodosakis, a supplement industry consultant and assistant professor at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, also offered some comments on his website the day the study was released. "I have to wonder if this study was designed to fail. When you pick patients who don't have much pain to start, they don't have much room to improve,” he said. “Then when you pick patients whose joints are stable and have very little disease, you won't see significant changes on x-ray in two, short years. It's the perfect formula to make it look like glucosamine doesn't work.”

Dr. Theodosakis went on to say that perhaps the authors thought they were doing the right thing. “They did design this study in 2003 or 2004, before we knew that this kind of design is all but useless. Granted, it's a lot easier to see where the researchers went wrong after the study was complete, I admit. But don't buy the results of this study just yet until you read on. There are some big problems with this study,” he said. “The doctors who wrote the editorial in the Annals of Internal Medicine did a pretty good job of exploring the problems with the study. I would have to agree with them on most of the points.”

More...