Walks like a duck

[drwex]

and sure as hell quacks like a duck: "Glucosamine No Remedy for Lower Back Pain, Says Study"

I know, this will completely fail to dissuade the many who swear by it, including friends of mine who are perfectly happy to claim to be "reality-based" when it comes to disagreeing with Dubya but don't find certain scientific bits of reality convenient. But I can't resist pointing this sort of thing out anyway.

Comments

[coraline]

er... i have no vested interest in either outcome, since i don't suffer from joint pain and don't take the stuff, but my experience has been that most people i know who like it a) take it in a compound with chondroitin, and b) take it for knees and ankles. these points were both pointed out in the article as not being covered by this study. so sure, "glucosamine alone doesn't seem to be effective on lower back pain" is a reasonable conclusion, but it doesn't sound like a reason to throw it out entirely yet.

You are correct

[drwex]

and I have full confidence that once we see the proper double-blind studies of its use for joint pain we'll have more evidence to work with. But as noted, the stuff is sold for back pain as well, and about 1/4th of people with chronic pain do try to use it as a remedy.

Re: You are correct

[intuition-ist.livejournal.com]

don't underestimate the placebo effect....

Re: You are correct

[drwex]

That's exactly my point. The stuff performs about as well as a placebo.

Re: You are correct

[imvfd.livejournal.com]

The stuff performs about as well as a placebo.

The same holds true for antidepressants as well, if I remember correctly.

Re: You are correct

[drwex]

Sort of. What I've read shows that some ADs do not outperform placebos in people with mild to moderate depression. ADs still seem to perform better for people with severe depression.

The other confounding factor here is that the placebo effect varies a lot. For one thing, there's good evidence that the placebo effect seen now is much stronger than the effect seen in the past decades when many drugs (including ADs) were approved. You can also get wildly varying placebo effects by changing something as simple as the color of the pills used, or the parts of the US or the world in which you do your study. I believe WIRED's story on this (http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/magazine/17-09/ff_placebo_effect?currentPage=all) was a good pop-lit summary.

Re: You are correct

[marius23.livejournal.com]

Actually, there is already significant evidence related to its use for treating osteoarthritis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glucosamine#Clinical_studies Unfortunately, much of that evidence is conflicting. Based on the information there, I think it's probably safe to say that glucosamine sulphate (but not hydrochloride) provides some clinical benefit in treating arthritis.