Arthritis Supplements Often Come Up Short

f the bottle of supplements you bought to help ease arthritis pain hasn't helped, the reason might be that the pills don't contain the ingredients they're supposed to.

Of the 20 joint supplements marketed to people and their pets that were selected by ConsumerLab.com and tested by independent laboratories, 40 percent failed to contain what their labels promised.

All the problems popped up among products that claimed to contain chondroitin, a key - and pricey - ingredient. Of 11 such brands, eight came up short on the substance, which is purported to inhibit enzymes that break down the cartilage in joints.

For instance, Nature's Plus Ultra Maximum Strength Chondroitin 600, which touts "highest quality" chondroitin, turned out to have no chondroitin at all.

Even pets are getting shorted. Nutri-Vet Nutritionals Hip & Joint Soft Chews, which is marketed for dogs, contained less than 1 percent of its claimed chondroitin and less than half the promised glucosamine, a substance thought to stimulate cartilage production.

This means that people are spending a lot of money on a product that won't do anything, said Dr. Tod Cooperman, president of ConsumerLab.com, a Westchester, N.Y.-based company that independently evaluates health and nutrition products and periodically publishes reviews.

Cooperman says the findings are especially disturbing since there is some scientific evidence that the supplements containing chondroitin and glucosamine can indeed help arthritis sufferers.

When contacted by MSNBC.com, several of the manufacturers of these supplements questioned the validity of ConsumerLab.com's results.

Other experts said they weren't surprised to hear that a lab found discrepancies between what's advertised on the label and what's actually found in each pill.

"We've known about this problem for a long time," said Dr. Wallace Sampson, editor of The Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine and a clinical professor of medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine. "Dosing in these products can vary from 0 percent to 300 percent."

No one's watching
Lack of monitoring is the big problem, said Dr. Joan Von Feldt, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

"These nutraceuticals aren't monitored or regulated in the same way as prescription drugs are," said Von Feldt, an arthritis specialist. "And this issue has been identified with a lot of these products. And it's not just a problem with the dose of the therapeutic agent, but also with the possibility of contaminants."

The types of products reviewed by ConsumerLab.com were supposed to contain either chondroitin, glucosamine, MSM or a combination of these ingredients. No problems were found among the products that contained just glucosamine or MSM. more >>