http://www.australianprescriber.com/magazine/27/3/61/3/
http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/175_08...my/bellamy.html
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/322/7300/1439?eaf=
http://www.nps.org.au/health_professionals..._osteoarthritis

TS, check the validity of your resources, wikipedia is well known for its inaccuracy among health experts. Despite of the fact that the information provided by wiki has certain truth, but you just dunno who wrote the information on that site, which resources he/she based on the info on, how reliable is the info, whether it is externally/internally valid or not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia

According to various journals, the links to few of it are provided above, there are no strong evidences that glucosamine helps osteoarthritis. HOWEVER, at the same time, there is no proof that it will harm the patient as well. The only possible side effect to glucoasmine is allergy to shellfish.

The only real help for OA is glucosamine thus far, and most of the treatments focus on relieving the symptoms (knee pain) (excluding other complementary medicines). I wouldn't make a claim that glucosamine will harm the patient directly. It is just that there is no harm in taking glucosamine. And if it does help one's knee, then good for him/her, which means in other words, it may help some people and it may not.

The only catch in taking glucosamine is it needs to be taken for 4-6 weeks in order to help the knee.

In addition, TS, it is not easy to see the improvement in the symptoms of the knee if the progress is gradual and slowly increase over time.

Let me ask you a question, would you rather see your beloved one in pain rather than giving him/her a possible help which may improve his/her symptoms?



This post has been edited by nimloth32: Mar 3 2009, 08:48 AM

First of all, i did not claim that many ppl benefited, i merely stated that there is no harm in taking the medicine (if i mistype my answer, then i am sorry). Secondly, the purpose of the trials is to provide further evidences to the efficacy of the medicine. You are right in saying that we don't know whether they are under 'controlled conditions'. Hence, the results of the articles in BMJ, MJA, etc which i posted up are peer reviewed by other health experts to check its validity. The validity of those articles is undisputable. I mean, at least it is more reliable than wikipedia. No offence.

This post has been edited by nimloth32: Mar 3 2009, 09:00 AM

yea, but some glucosamine are made up from shellfish. If you are allergy to shellfish, then be wary of it.