Glucosamine supplements related to lower cancer mortality

Adapted from Medscape 5 Dec 2022 by Vinod Rane BS Pharm

Glucosamine, popularly used for osteoarthritis, has previously been found to have anti-inflammatory properties and regular use has now been shown to reduce cancers overall and particularly kidney, lung and rectal cancer.

This was a large prospective study that included 453,645 participants aged 38 to 73 who did not have cancer at the start of the study.

19.4% were taking glucosamine regularly and 80.6% were not. The patients were followed up for a median of 12 years.

Cancer was reduced in cancer overall 0.95, kidney cancer 0.68, lung cancer 0.84 and rectal cancer 0.76.

The study did not include the dose, form and duration of supplement use and there could be a risk that the people who took glucosamine also followed other healthier behaviours than those who didn’t.

My comment: I have been taking glucosamine for 23 years now and it has been a great benefit to my joints. I can see that confounding could be a problem. Non smokers greatly reduce lung cancer, vitamin D users are less likely to get rectal cancer, and slim people are less likely to get kidney cancer.

Zhou J et al Associaton between glucosamine use and cancer mortality. A large prospective cohort study. Front Nutr. 2022;9:947818.