Longevity Briefs: Could This Supplement For Joint Pain Prevent Age-Related Diseases?

Longevity briefs provides a short summary of novel research in biology, medicine, or biotechnology that caught the attention of our researchers in Oxford, due to its potential to improve our health, wellbeing, and longevity.

The problem:

Glucosamine – a sugar molecule joined to an amine – is commonly taken as a supplement to alleviate joint pain in osteoarthritis. The effects of glucosamine are largely down to its ability to suppress inflammation, which plays a key role in the progression of osteoarthritis. Yet inflammation is an important driver of many age-related diseases, including cardiovascular diseases, neurodegenerative diseases and cancer. There’s some intriguing data suggesting that glucosamine supplementation might reduce the risk of some of these diseases, but a more thorough investigation is necessary. In this study, researchers examine data from the UK Biobank, a database of over 500,000 adults, to determine if there is an association between glucosamine supplementation and disease risk.

The discovery:

The researchers initially included 269,033 participants who were free of any non-communicable diseases at the start of the study. In an attempt to minimise confounding factors, they used a statistical technique called 1:1 propensity-score matching (PSM). Think of PSM like finding a “twin” for each glucosamine user – someone who didn’t take glucosamine but was very similar in terms of age, gender, lifestyle, medical history, and other health-related factors. This created two groups for comparison: 52,525 glucosamine users and 52,525 non-users.

After a median follow-up period of 13.8 years, regular glucosamine use was associated with a statistically lower risk of seven specific non-communicable diseases. These included esophageal cancer (27% lower risk), gout (19% lower risk), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) (14% lower risk), colorectal cancer (14% lower risk), chronic liver disease (13% lower risk), heart failure (12% lower risk), and coronary heart disease (8% lower risk). These risk reductions were all independent of age and gender, with two exceptions. When grouped by gender, heart failure risk was 22% lower in men but was not significantly altered in women. When grouped by age, participants below the age of 65 were 51% more likely to develop atrial fibrillation.

The implications:

This study suggests that glucosamine supplementation is associated with a quite substantial risk reduction for multiple severe age-related diseases. This study was observational in nature: participants were not randomly assigned to take glucosamine or a placebo. Instead, participants who chose to take glucosamine were compared to those who did not, which introduces confounding factors. For example, glucosamine users were more likely to be wealthier, but also more likely to be former smokers or drinkers. The propensity matching technique used in this study should have reduced the effect of such confounders, but it is not perfect as the UK Biobank data isn’t all-encompassing. Another limitation is that glucosamine use was assessed by a yes/no questionnaire, which means that researchers weren’t able to make any analysis concerning dose.

With these limitations in mind, it does seem as though there is potential for glucosamine supplementation to be highly beneficial for disease prevention. Suppression of inflammation is a plausible mechanism, though the apparent benefits of supplementation could also be indirect. For example, if participants started taking glucosamine for joint pain, it may have helped them to maintain a healthy lifestyle with adequate physical exercise throughout the follow-up period.