SynthesisFrontiers in medicine2026
Network meta-analysis of metformin, probiotics, krill oil, celecoxib, and glucosamine/chondroitin in the treatment of knee osteoarthritis.
Synthesis in Frontiers in medicine, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Purpose: Knee osteoarthritis (KOA) creates a substantial global socioeconomic burden. Celecoxib remains a standard pharmacological treatment, but its long-term safety profile raises concerns. Several adjuvant therapies-probiotics, metformin, krill oil, and glucosamine/chondroitin (CS+GH)-have produced encouraging results in individual trials; however, direct head-to-head comparisons are absent. This network meta-analysis (NMA) compares the efficacy and safety of these five interventions to inform individualized treatment decisions in clinical practice. Methods: RCTs published from database inception through February 2026 were retrieved from PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, and the Cochrane Library. A random-effects NMA was conducted using Stata 18.0 and R (MetaInsight). Continuous outcomes were synthesized as mean differences (MD) and dichotomous safety endpoints as risk ratios (RR). Interventions were ranked by surface under the cumulative ranking curve (SUCRA), and evidence quality was assessed using the GRADE framework. Results: Twenty-three RCTs met the inclusion criteria. No significant network inconsistency ( Systematic Review Registration: https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?ID=CRD420261345598, identifier: CRD420261345598.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.