In a two-year multicenter study led by University of Utah doctors, the dietary supplements glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate performed no better than placebo in slowing the rate of cartilage loss in the knees of osteoarthritis patients.

Scientists have long wrestled with how to aid those who suffer cartilage damage and loss. One popular way is to inject an artificial gel that can imitate cartilage’s natural ability to act as the body’s shock absorber. But that solution is temporary, requiring follow-up injections.

It’s an unfortunate fact backed by studies of former professional football and soccer players: injury to joint cartilage escalates the risk of developing of osteoarthritis (OA). However, why this occurs—the details of how joint cartilage cells respond to acute trauma and how this response leads to progressive cartilage degradation—remains open to investigation.

Some 46 million people suffer from arthritis in the United States alone. The worst cases require painful surgeries to drill holes in and reinforce joints. Now researchers working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are studying an unusually pliant yet strong synthetic cartilage replacement in hopes of providing arthritis victims with some relief.

For the first time, researchers have linked increased friction with early wear in the joints of animals. Work led by Brown University physician and engineer Gregory Jay, M.D., shows mice that do not produce the protein lubricin begin to show wear in their joints less than two weeks after birth. This finding not only points up the protective power of lubricin but also suggests that it could be used to prevent joint wear after an injury.

Rice University biomedical engineers have developed a new technique for growing cartilage from human embryonic stem cells, a method that could be used to grow replacement cartilage for the surgical repair of knee, jaw, hip, and other joints.