Matching a prescription drug means less without a placebo arm
606 people took the glucosamine-chondroitin pair or celecoxib for six months and pain halved in both. In this condition placebo groups routinely halve pain too.
What the study found
The combination matched a prescription drug in a trial with no placebo
Six hundred and six people took either the glucosamine-chondroitin pair or celecoxib for six months, and pain halved in both. There was no placebo arm. In this condition placebo groups routinely halve pain too, so matching an active drug does not show either one beat doing nothing.
The caveat · Loose bar for matching the drug
The bar for counting as no worse was 40 points on a 0-to-500 pain scale, which is wide. The pair used glucosamine hydrochloride, the salt an earlier analysis concluded was ineffective, which makes matching a prescription drug harder to square with the rest of this literature rather than easier.
What we don't know
The bar for counting as no worse was 40 points on a 0-to-500 pain scale, which is wide. The pair used glucosamine hydrochloride, the salt an earlier analysis concluded was ineffective, which makes matching a prescription drug harder to square with the rest of this literature rather than easier.