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Page: << Prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Next >> First of all, the team determined one of the preparations to be useless.
"I think we have shown pretty conclusively that glucosamine hydrochloride doesn't work," Vlad said. "The data there is all consistent, it goes together -- there's just no evidence that it works."
But that wasn't the story with the other preparation, glucosamine sulfate.
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In that case, results varied widely between the randomized trials. However, that variance went far beyond random chance. In fact, according to Vlad, the spread in results among various trials was four times that which would be normally expected.
No particular feature of the studies' design helped explain this disparity, except for differences among trials in what's known as "allocation concealment" -- the fact that some trials were more lax than others at concealing from the researchers involved which patients would get the drug and which would get a placebo.
One factor did appear to play a role in the variance between the glucosamine sulfate trial results: industry involvement.
"It's really hard to know just how big a factor that is," Vlad said, "whether it's manufacturing the whole effect or just exaggerating an effect that's there." He also stressed that, "If there is a bias from industry, I doubt very much that it is intentional. People want to sell their product, but I think that they rarely go into a study with the intention of twisting the results."
But Reginster, in his editorial, believes Vlad's own analysis is flawed. He agreed with the Boston group that industry involvement can, and often does, influence trial results. But he also notes that many of the industry studies included in the Boston analysis had to pass muster with the European League Against Rheumatism, the expert body which vouched for many of the trials' high quality.
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