Glucosamine and Osteoarthritis

Osteoarthritis :: Glucosamine and Osteoarthritis

Several human studies and animal experiments report benefits of glucosamine in treating osteoarthritis of various joints of the body, although the evidence is less plentiful than that for knee osteoarthritis.

Some of these benefits include pain relief, possibly due to an anti-inflammatory effect of glucosamine, and improved joint function.

Overall, these studies have not been well designed.

Analyses, which group the existing studies together and isolate higher-quality research (meta-analyses) have found conflicting results, with improvement in some scales measuring pain and disability, but not in others.

Although there is some promising research, more study is needed in this area before a firm conclusion can be made.