Bello Alfonso E, Oesser Steffen
University of Illinois College of Medicine at Chicago, Chicago, IL 60612, USA.
Curr Med Res Opin. 2006 Nov;22(11):2221-32. doi: 10.1185/030079906X148373.
There is a need for an effective treatment for the millions of people in the United States with osteoarthritis (OA), a degenerative joint disease. The demand for treatments, both traditional and non-traditional, will continue to grow as the population ages.
This article reviews the medical literature on the preclinical and clinical research on a unique compound, collagen hydrolysate. Articles were obtained through searches of the PubMed database (www.pubmed.gov) through May 2006 using several pairs of key words (collagen hydrolysate and osteoarthritis; collagen hydrolysate and cartilage; collagen hydrolysate and chondrocytes; collagen hydrolysate and clinical trial) without date limits. In addition, other sources of information, such as abstracts presented at scientific congresses and articles in the German medical literature not available on PubMed, were reviewed and included based on the authors' judgment of their relevance to the topic of the review.
According to published research, orally administered collagen hydrolysate has been shown to be absorbed intestinally and to accumulate in cartilage. Collagen hydrolysate ingestion stimulates a statistically significant increase in synthesis of extracellular matrix macromolecules by chondrocytes (p < 0.05 compared with untreated controls). These findings suggest mechanisms that might help patients affected by joint disorders such as OA. Four open-label and three double-blind studies were identified and reviewed; although many of these studies did not provide key information--such as the statistical significance of the findings--they showed collagen hydrolysate to be safe and to provide improvement in some measures of pain and function in some men and women with OA or other arthritic conditions.
A growing body of evidence provides a rationale for the use of collagen hydrolysate for patients with OA. It is hoped that ongoing and future research will clarify how collagen hydrolysate provides its clinical effects and determine which populations are most appropriate for treatment with this supplement.
美国有数百万骨关节炎（OA）患者，这是一种退行性关节疾病，需要有效的治疗方法。随着人口老龄化，对传统和非传统治疗方法的需求将持续增长。
本文回顾了关于一种独特化合物——胶原蛋白水解物的临床前和临床研究的医学文献。通过使用几对关键词（胶原蛋白水解物与骨关节炎；胶原蛋白水解物与软骨；胶原蛋白水解物与软骨细胞；胶原蛋白水解物与临床试验）检索截至2006年5月的PubMed数据库（www.pubmed.gov）获取文章，无日期限制。此外，还审查并纳入了其他信息来源，如在科学大会上发表的摘要以及PubMed上未提供的德国医学文献中的文章，这些纳入是基于作者对其与综述主题相关性的判断。
根据已发表的研究，口服胶原蛋白水解物已被证明可在肠道吸收并在软骨中蓄积。摄入胶原蛋白水解物能刺激软骨细胞合成细胞外基质大分子的量出现统计学上的显著增加（与未治疗的对照组相比，p < 0.05）。这些发现提示了可能有助于OA等关节疾病患者的机制。确定并审查了四项开放标签研究和三项双盲研究；尽管其中许多研究未提供关键信息——如研究结果的统计学显著性——但它们表明胶原蛋白水解物是安全的，并且在一些OA或其他关节炎病症的男性和女性中，在某些疼痛和功能指标上有改善。
越来越多的证据为OA患者使用胶原蛋白水解物提供了理论依据。希望正在进行的和未来的研究将阐明胶原蛋白水解物如何产生临床效果，并确定哪些人群最适合用这种补充剂进行治疗。
