Italian double-blind multicenter study comparing S-adenosylmethionine, naproxen, and placebo in the treatment of degenerative joint disease

Caruso I, Pietrogrande V · The American Journal of Medicine

SAMe produced the same analgesic activity as naproxen, and both arms separated from placebo (p < 0.01). Tolerability favoured SAMe on physicians' judgement (p < 0.025), patients' judgement (p < 0.01) and the number of patients reporting side effects (p < 0.05), and the SAMe and placebo arms had the same number of side effects. Ten patients on SAMe and 13 on placebo withdrew for intolerance.

Population

734 patients across 33 Italian rheumatology and orthopaedic centres with osteoarthritis of the hip, knee, spine or hand, 582 of them with hip or knee disease

Intervention

Oral S-adenosylmethionine 1,200 mg daily

Comparator

Naproxen 750 mg daily, and placebo

Limitations

The largest SAMe trial in this disease and the one that carries the field, but it reports significance without effect sizes, pools four joint sites, and predates modern reporting standards by decades — the Cochrane review that pooled it rated the methodological quality and quality of reporting poor. Full text was not retrievable.