Health News and Information

Although standard drugs for osteoarthritis reduce pain, there is worrisome evidence that they may contribute to the problem by interfering with the efforts of cartilage to repair itself. When this was discovered, researchers in Europe began to look for substances that could protect cartilage from further harm. The term for such a substance is a “chondroprotective agent.” The concept of chondroprotective agents has not been widely accepted among U.S. physicians, although veterinarians in the United States have begun to use it.A number of substances have been proposed as chondroprotective agents. The reasoning behind two of them, glucosamine and chondroitin, is almost embarrassingly simple: They contain raw materials necessary for rebuilding cartilage. Hypothetically, supplying extra amounts of these raw materials may enable cartilage to repair itself faster.Another proposed chondroprotective agent, S-adenosylme-thionine, is believed to help cartilage repair and possibly exert other helpful effects.If chondroprotective agents live up to their name, they might even stop osteoarthritis from following its natural course and becoming worse with time. If so, they could be called “disease-modifying drugs,” unlike other treatments that just reduce symptoms temporarily. More research, however, is necessary before we can say for sure that chondroprotective agents really work this way.7/306/5*