Chondroitin, a dietary supplement often sold in combination with glucosamine and marketed as a treatment for osteoarthritis, has been found to be ineffective in relieving the pain of hip and knee arthritis. Researchers at the University of Berne, Switzerland, who reported their findings in the Annals of Internal Medicine, examined 20 previously published trials of 3,846 patients and found the benefit of chondroitin to be either minimal or nonexistent. Another seminal, large-scale 2006 study concluded that the supplement, in combination with glucosamine, helped patients with moderate-to-severe pain but not mild-to-moderate arthritis.
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