According to a new report many herbal medicines and complementary therapies do not offer any relief in rheumatoid arthritis. In a review of published data on natural remedies researchers found that a majority of them were totally ineffective at relieving a patient's symptoms. The report went on to say that at some point in their lives 46 % of the people gave complementary medicine a shot, spending £450 million a year as a result. The treatments that are mostly tried include acupuncture, chiropractic, homeopathy, hypnotherapy, osteopathy and medical herbalism.

Doctors reported that in the case of arthritis and other such conditions as many as 60 % have turned to these therapies at some point. The report was compiled by the Arthritis Research Campaign and in the study doctors reviewed medical research on more than 50 remedies. These were sold as treatments for rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis or fibromyalgia, a condition that causes pain in the muscles and connective tissues.

Experts ranked the therapies from one to five with one indicating absolutely no effect of the treatment and five suggesting that the treatment has worked. In the case of people suffering from rheumatoid arthritis the medicines did not score well and 13 out of 21 or 62 % complementary medicines scored just 1 point. The only remedy to receive a five was fish oil while remedies like extracts of elk antler velvet and green-lipped mussels were found to be completely ineffective.

Alan Silman, medical director for the Arthritis Research Campaign said, "We get more calls about complementary therapies than any other topic. Our report is to empower people, and it shows these treatments are not all good or all bad. With some you're wasting your time and money, but there are a number which, compared to doing nothing, are beneficial."

The results of alternative medicine in the case of osteoarthritis were just a little better with three out of 28 remedies being backed by strong evidence and 6 getting a 1. Capsaicin gel made from chilly peppers received a five as it was the most effective at reducing pain among patients of osteoarthritis while a therapy called phytodolor and the nutritional supplement S-adenosyl-L-methionine (SAMe), both scored a four for effectiveness. One of the most widely used products; Glucosamine worked in some trials but not others and glucosamine sulphate scored 3 compared with glucosamine hydrochloride which scored 1.

For fibromyalgia only four products were assessed and none of them were found to be effective with three medicines scoring 2 out of 5, and the fourth scoring 1.

The safety of therapies was also ranked using a traffic light system of green, amber and red lights. The only red traffic light was given to a Chinese herbal medicine called thunder god vine for rheumatoid arthritis indicating serious reported side-effects. (Pallavi contributed to this report)