Cartilage glutathione.The antioxidant yourcartilage makes itself.

What cartilage glutathione is

Cartilage glutathione is the glutathione made and held inside chondrocytes, the cells of joint cartilage. Glutathione is a small molecule of three amino acids, glutamate, cysteine and glycine, and the most abundant small sulphur-containing compound that cells make. It protects cells from oxidative damage and keeps their redox balance Forman 2009.

Its working form is reduced glutathione, GSH. When it neutralises an oxidant, two molecules pair up into oxidised glutathione, GSSG. The ratio between the two is a standard read-out of how much antioxidant capacity a cell has left Del Carlo 2003.

Why cartilage depends on it

Articular cartilage is devoid of blood vessels, lymphatics and nerves, and has a limited capacity to repair itself. Its cells make up about 2% of its volume, and nutrients reach them with the water that flows through the tissue under load Sophia Fox 2009.

Glutathione was more plentiful in rat cartilage than in the meniscus or fat pad of the same knee Zhu 2020. In growth-plate cartilage, glutathione made from glutamine kept reactive oxygen species down and let the cells survive in an environment without blood vessels Stegen 2020.

How cartilage cells make it

Two enzymes build glutathione: glutamate cysteine ligase joins glutamate and cysteine, and glutathione synthetase adds glycine. The supply of cysteine and the activity of the first enzyme are the key controls Lu 2013. In human chondrocytes, removing cystine from the culture medium was enough to deplete glutathione Del Carlo 2003.

Glutamate comes from glutamine, and the cartilage identity switch SOX9 raises glutamine uptake Stegen 2020. Glycine is also needed in large amounts for collagen, and one analysis estimates the body's supply may fall short by about 10 g a day Meléndez-Hevia 2009. More on how it is made.

What uses it up

Loading: in cow cartilage, cyclic compression oxidised glutathione, and unloaded periods were needed for it to recover Zhu 2020. Oxidative and inflammatory stress: hydrogen peroxide, IL-1β and calcium crystals each lowered SOX9 and raised MMP13 in human cartilage cells Rong 2019. Ferroptosis: GPX4, which needs glutathione, was lower in damaged osteoarthritic cartilage Miao 2022.

What changes after 50

Chondrocytes from donors aged 50 and over had a higher ratio of oxidised to reduced glutathione, and more than twice as many died under oxidant stress Del Carlo 2003. Nrf2, the switch for antioxidant genes, was about 40% lower in cells from older adults and barely responded to stress Taylor 2023. Older cells also showed more oxidative damage to their peroxiredoxin antioxidants Collins 2016. More on ageing.

Can it be supplied?

Two routes have raised glutathione in people, measured in blood. Six months of oral glutathione raised blood and cheek-cell levels Richie 2015, though a single large dose did not raise plasma glutathione Witschi 1992. Supplying its building blocks, cysteine as N-acetylcysteine and glycine, raised red-cell glutathione in older adults Sekhar 2011 · Kumar 2023, with the clearest effect in people who started low Lizzo 2022.

In cartilage cells and animals, NAC protected cartilage through glutathione Nakagawa 2010 and, given by mouth to rats, held back MMP13 and collagen loss Kaneko 2019. Alpha-lipoic acid raised cells' glutathione by improving cysteine uptake Han 1997. Gluthanol™ is built on the building-block route.

What isn't known yet

No study in our library has measured glutathione inside human cartilage in living people after a supplement. The human trials measured blood; the cartilage work is in donated cells, cow and rat tissue, and animals. The Gluthanol™ blend itself has not yet been tested in a published study.

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