PM&R News   •   April 2018

I truly believe we all do the best we can to help our patients, particularly control pain and improve function in the field of PM&R. But I must say that it can be frustrating at times when new reports suggest that a treatment that we commonly recommend may be doing more harm than good.

Another frustration is the limited amount of good research regarding supplements.

In a recent article in Molecular Cell, there is a suggestion that chondroitin sulfate, the popular supplement of osteoarthritis may promote the growth of tumor cells in melanoma. Specifically, supplementation of chondroitin sulfate exhibits oncogene specific pro-tumor effects on melanoma cells in certain populations who are at a higher genetic risk.

This truly questions the safety of supplements, even those presumed to be safe. The researchers associated with this study suggest that knowing a patients genetic background would be useful in determining the efficacy of a particular supplement in the context of maintaining a low side effect/cancer risk. They also suggest that more research on both the efficacy and safety of supplements is warranted.