RSS Feeds
Chondroitin for Osteoarthritis of the Knee or Hip
- Harley Goldberg, DO;
- Andrew Avins, MD; and
- Stephen Bent, MD
- From Kaiser Permanente Northern California, Oakland, CA, 94612; and San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94121.
TO THE EDITOR:
Reichenbach and colleagues' meta-analysis on chondroitin for osteoarthritis of the knee or hip (1) is both timely and important. However, we are concerned that the authors' sweeping conclusions are not well grounded in their methodology.
Based on data extraction and synthesis, the overall effect size of chondroitin is large (see Reichenbach and colleagues' Figure 2; P < 0.001), although this conclusion is limited by the presence of heterogeneity among trials (I2 = 92%). Using meta-regression, the authors identified a subset of trials that …
