What should rheumatologists tell their patients?
“On the basis of the results from GAIT, it seems prudent to tell our patients with symptomatic osteoarthritis of the knee that neither glucosamine hydrochloride nor chondroitin sulfate alone has been shown to be more efficacious than placebo for the treatment of knee pain,” writes Marc C. Hochberg, MD, MPH, a professor of medicine and the head of the division of rheumatology and clinical immunology at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, Maryland, in an editorial accompanying the new study.2 “If patients choose to take dietary supplements to control their symptoms, they should be advised to take glucosamine sulfate rather than glucosamine hydrochloride and, for those with severe pain, that taking chondroitin sulfate with glucosamine sulfate may have an additive effect,” Dr. Hochberg suggests. Moreover, “three months of treatment is a sufficient period for the evaluation of efficacy; if there is no clinically significant decrease in symptoms by this time, the suppleme
