It s all over the news today. Depending on the accuracy of the headline, you may conclude that worms live longer when exposed to glucosamine, mice live 10 percent longer when fed glucosamine or that YOU may live 8 years longer if you take the stuff.
As we always caution, be careful of the headlines. They are often misleading or just plain wrong.
For example, there is this: Glucosamine promotes longevity in worms and mice, study says (from the L.A. Times), which is pretty good
And this: Have Glucosamine To Increase Lifespan! (from News on Wellness), which is just plain hideous.
ACSH s Dr. Josh Bloom explains why you don t need to mob the GNC store near you to get the stuff. First, although nematodes (small roundworms) may be a perfectly fine tool for screening large numbers of compounds to look for some kind of effect, their relevance to human health is just about zero. Second, it is standard protocol to use a rodent model next in this case mice but its relevance to the human condition is often unknown, depending on the disease in question. For example, if humans were mice, cancer would have been cured long ago. Third, if you look at the graph below (adapted from the journal article) something doesn't seem quite right.
He continues, When the researchers fed aged mice (100 weeks old) glucosamine, their survival time went from about 145 weeks to about 157 weeks (estimates from graph). But if you look at the the time where 50 percent of the mice died (orange arrows) the numbers were about 125 weeks and 128 weeks, respectively. In other words, the same. This smells fishy, especially since the difference between the two groups pops up very suddenly at 128 weeks (pink arrow).
Yet, the vast amount of news coverage that this study preliminary at best received will no doubt have people climbing over each other to get a bottle before it runs out.
Dr. Bloom notes, I suspect that the only people who will actually live 8 years longer will be those who manufacture and sell glucosamine. But it will be because they are living a stress-free life in a mansion in Maui overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
