Association of habitual glucosamine use with risk of cardiovascular disease: prospective study in UK Biobank

OBJECTIVE: To prospectively assess the association of habitual glucosamine use with risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) events. DESIGN: Prospective cohort study. SETTING: UK Biobank. PARTICIPANTS: 466 039 participants without CVD at baseline who completed a questionnaire on supplement use, which included glucosamine. These participants were enrolled from 2006 to 2010 and were followed up to 2016. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Incident CVD events, including CVD death, coronary heart disease, and stroke. RESULTS: During a median follow-up of seven years, there were 10 204 incident CVD events, 3060 CVD deaths, 5745 coronary heart disease events, and 3263 stroke events. After adjustment for age, sex, body mass index, race, lifestyle factors, dietary intakes, drug use, and other supplement use, glucosamine use was associated with a significantly lower risk of total CVD events (hazard ratio 0.85, 95% confidence interval 0.80 to 0.90), CVD death (0.78, 0.70 to 0.87), coronary heart disease (0.82, 0.76 to 0.88), and stroke (0.91, 0.83 to 1.00). CONCLUSION: Habitual use of glucosamine supplement to relieve osteoarthritis pain might also be related to lower risks of CVD events.