What a Pain in the... Knee

A funny thing happened over at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) while they were doing a two-year, taxpayer-funded study into the effectiveness of the dietary supplements glucosamine and chondroitin in slowing loss of cartilage due to osteoarthritis of the knee. As usual, some of the test subjects were treated with glucosamine and chondroitin, while another group was given an inert placebo. Everything was going along swimmingly, until the subjects given the placebo continued to show less knee cartilage loss than those getting glucosamine and chondroitin.

Bottom line? NIH decided they couldn't decide. "While these results are of interest, we cannot draw definitive conclusions about the utility of glucosamine or chondroitin in reducing joint space width loss, in part because the placebo group fared better than anticipated based on prior research results," said Josephine P. Briggs, M.D., of the NIH in a press release.