Table 3.

An excerpt of recent meta-analyses and systematic reviews addressing the efficacy of curcumin in different diseases associated with inflammation.

Disease	No. of Clinical Trials and Patients Included in the Meta-Analysis/Systematic Review	Formulation	Observations	References
Primary knee osteoarthritis	Ten RCTs on 1287 participants	Formulations of turmeric or curcumin extract with increased bioavailability as adjunct or mono-therapy compared to placebo for up to maximal 8 months	↓ pain and ↑ function with reduced incidence of adverse events compared to NSAIDs	[67]
Osteoarthritis knee	16 RCTs on 1810 participants mostly from Asia	All forms of turmeric extracts compared to placebo or actives e.g., NSAID for up to 12 weeks (one study 16 weeks)	↓ pain and ↑ function compared to placebo and similar to NSAIDs with improved safety profile	[68]
Ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn’s disease (CD)	6 RCTs on a total of 374 patients with active mild to moderate UC and one RCT on 30 patients with mild to moderate CD	All forms of curcumin formulations compared to placebo for up to 6 months	Promising results. Two studies with low oral doses reported no significant differences and four with higher doses or better bioavailable curcumin reported significant reduction in clinical symptoms and higher remission rates	[70]

↓ stands for decrease and ↑ stands for increase.