Interesting. Might even be a good supplement for our kids to take. But the evidence presented here appears to me to be insufficient, suggestive but very insufficient to make the assertions they have made. Just my opinion.
Now if they had referenced this article I'd have been really intrigued - and am as a result of finding this article. It reports findings in MS that support the role of n-acetylglucosamine in suppressing T-cell function and is from 2011. Additional work in MS is being done to look at this by the way.
Glucosamine-like supplement suppresses multiple sclerosis attacks
UCI study shows promise of metab
http://today.uci.edu/news/2011/09/nr_ms_110930.php
or on Pubmed at:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21965673
I am not a biochemist or doctor or microbiologist so I am not in a position to critique the science behind this. It sounds like a reasonable hypothesis, but then so do a lot of things that turn out to be wrong or useless.
I'll have to ask our GI for his thoughts on it.
You can skip this part but I just cringe when I see articles like this so I am taking the liberty of ranting a bit here.
Unfortunately, articles like this may have some merit but the way the info is presented makes me feel like it's just another hype trying to sell a cure to desperate people. For example, according to this article they know for certain the exact mechanism of damage in all Crohn's patients (I am pretty sure there are a lot of researchers out there who would be thrilled to hear this has been discovered). Therefore they can tell you the exact form of this supplement that will benefit all Crohn's patients (based on a study of 12 children who took it as an adjunct treatment).
It's hard to even research the validity of the assertions since their "sources" list doesn't include the 3 articles they referenced and they didn't include the names of the articles or the authors. This is poor reporting and copyright infringement.
What is in their sources list is general resource articles including about.com for goodness sake. Not to be disrespectful to the people who write for about.com but that is not the place I go for reliable research articles (Pubmed) or comprehensive reliable medical advice (Medscape).
Finally, this is "old" news. Articles from 1977, 1999, 2000 and nothing since then. There doesn't appear to be any follow up research particularly to the single small study of 12 children that reported such promising results. This is a little peculiar but perhaps not given that we are tallking about a nutritional supplement and not a drug. It's hard to know.
