How a joint supplement may overload the aging brain |
Glucosamine ranks among the most popular remedies for osteoarthritis, the joint disease that affects more than a third of people over age 65. A new study reports an unsettling pattern: among people already living with Alzheimer’s-related dementia, those who used glucosamine for at least a year faced a 25% higher risk of death. Among people with only mild cognitive impairment, that added risk disappeared.
The suspected mechanism is hyperglycosylation, an overactive coating of brain proteins with sugar molecules. Post-mortem tissue showed more of these sugar molecules in Alzheimer’s brains, and more still at later stages of the disease. Glucosamine slips easily into the brain, and in mice bred to develop Alzheimer’s, it deepened memory loss and accelerated nerve-cell damage.
The human data are observational and do not establish cause and effect, and the mouse work relied on an aggressive, accelerated form of early-onset Alzheimer’s. Even so, Harris Gelbard, who directs the Center for Neurotherapeutics Discovery at the University of Rochester Medicine, sees a practical signal. The evidence, he told Medical News Today, is “compelling enough... to have physicians suggest a cautionary note in self-medication.”
No supplement has been proven to treat or prevent dementia, and experts caution against starting or stopping any treatment without a doctor. The importance of timing remains an open question. At what stage of disease progression does glucosamine do harm? And should the millions of people taking it for stiff joints should think again?
To learn more about this research, jump to “Pain supplement glucosamine linked to faster dementia progression.”
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