Effectiveness and Safety of Glucosamine in the Treatment of Osteoarthritis

Abstract

There is a lot of controversy about the effect of glucosamine in the treatment of osteoarthritis and prevention of its progression, and there are always questions: is glucosamine effective in treatment and prevention of osteoarthritis?, what is the best duration of treatment to give the best efficacy?, Is glucosamine safe?, and is its combination with chondroitin more effective than administration of glucosamine alone?. To perform a systematic review to answer the questions above, we searched the online database, including PUBMED and Google Scholar until data inception February 2017. We found that there are conflicting results about the efficacy of glucosamine, but most of studies showed that it is safe and effective in treatment and prevention of osteoarthritis progression, but it often needs long period to be effective especially for prevention of the progression of the disease (2 years). Several studies found that glucosamine sulfate may is more effective than glucosamine hydrochloride, and its combination with chondroitin is more effective than administration of glucosamine alone especially in improvement of joint function.