Glucosamine and chondroitin, two popular supplements used to fight arthritis and joint pain, don't seem to work any better than placebo to slow cartilage loss in arthritis patients.

Researchers from the University of Utah carried out two-year study on the participants with 500 mg of glucosamine three times a day; or 400 mg of chondroitin sulfate three times a day; or a combination of the two supplements; or 200 mg of celecoxib daily; or a placebo

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the drug Celebrex (Pfizer, Inc., NY, NY; generic: celecoxib) for a new use on Friday, in order to treat juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (JRA) for children as young as two years of age.

The FDA's advisory panel had recommended the painkiller for this use back in November of 2006, with a vote of 15 to 1. The one opposing vote cited the lack of long-term, established data tracking the drug's safety for use in children. However, the 15 votes approving the recommendation claimed the risks involved outweighed the benefits

A review of pain relievers has found that some are safer than others. For instance, a widely-used medicine may carry as much risk of heart disease as Vioxx, an arthritis drug taken off the market two years ago.

Diclofenac, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug or NSAID has been around for decades and is widely prescribed throughout the world, particularly in Europe. Common doses were found to increase the risk of "cardiovascular events", primarily heart attack or sudden death by as much as 40%

A new study shows that patients taking Celebrex are nearly twice as likely to experience a heart attack as people using other drugs to treat arthritis pain.

Researchers at the New Zealand Medical Research Institute analyzed six studies involving 12,780 patients. They found that patients taking Celebrex had a 1.88-fold increase risk of a heart attack compared to those taking other painkillers