Bits Blog: Facebook's Other Big Disruption

Facebook just made a potentially game-changing announcement. It got less fanfare than Tuesday’s announcement that it is going into the social search business, but this other announcement may have bigger long-term implications for the technology industry.

Put simply, some of the world’s biggest computing systems just got a little cheaper, and a lot easier to configure. As a consequence, the companies that supply the hardware to these systems may have to scramble to remain as profitable. The reason is a Facebook-led open source project.

In 2011 Facebook began the Open Compute Project, an effort among technology companies to use open-source computer hardware. Tech companies similarly shared intellectual property with Linux software, which lowered costs and spurred innovation. Facebook’s project has attracted many significant participants, including Goldman Sachs, Arista Networks, Rackspace, Hewlett-Packard and Dell.

At a user summit on Wednesday Intel, another key member of the Open Compute Project, announced it would release to the group a silicon-based optical system that enables the data and computing elements in a rack of computer servers to communicate at 100 gigabits a second. That is significantly faster than conventional wire-based methods, and uses about half the power.

More important, it means that elements of memory and processing that now must be fixed closely together can be separated within a rack, and used as needed for different kinds of tasks. There is a lot of waste in data centers today simply because, when there is an upgrade in servers, lots of other associated data-processing hardware has to be changed, too.

There were other announcements, like a computer motherboard called Grouphug that allows different manufacturers’ chips to be interchanged without altering other parts of the machine. Before, they were custom made. Put together, such innovations potentially lower the cost and complexity of running big and small data centers to an extent that works for a lot of companies.

“Who wouldn’t want a cheaper, more efficient server?” said Frank Frankovsky, vice president of hardware design at Facebook, and the chairman of Open Compute. “The problem we’re solving is much larger than Facebook’s own challenges. There is a massive amount of data in the world that people expect to have processed quickly.”

To be sure, it’s in Facebook’s interest to attack expensive hardware. The company makes money from a service that requires hundreds of thousands of computer servers distributed in big centers around the world. Google and Amazon.com, which are not members of the project, maintain proprietary systems which they apparently felt gave them a competitive edge.

For Facebook, the difference seems to be more in the software. To the extent hardware costs drop, that’s great for them. Mr. Frankovsky argued that, while “this puts challenges on the incumbents” in hardware, “it also helps them. They have a finite number of engineering resources, and this way they hear from a community about whether there is an interest for a product.” Intel may hope to benefit from its open-source release, since it could see an overall rise in demand for its chips with the move toward cheaper computing.

The real test is whether Facebook can increase the number of potential buyers for Open Compute equipment. “The question is, can they extend this beyond a few Web businesses like Facebook and Rackspace, or a few financial exercises at Goldman, and bring this to industries like oil or aerospace?” said Matt Eastwood, an analyst with IDC, a technology research firm. “That will take it from 20 or 30 companies to hundreds of companies.”

The issue isn’t so much a technical one, he argues, as it is one of getting corporate information technology professionals interested in radical design changes. Mr. Frankovsky is aware of the problem. Recently he and his colleagues led a seminar in Texas for BP, Shell and other oil giants on how they could use Open Compute hardware in their data centers.

This will not change things dramatically this year, and possibly even next, but over the long haul it could remake a lot of businesses. Linux, remember, was around for several years as a minor player, but eventually undid Sun Microsystems and others.

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Algeria Confirms Hostage Deaths in Rescue Raid

BAMAKO, Mali — Kidnappers and at least some of their hostages were killed on Thursday as Algerian forces assaulted a heavily armed group of Islamist extremists holding dozens of captives, including Americans and other foreigners, in a remote gas field facility in the Algerian desert, the Algerian government announced.

Kjetil Alsvik/Statoil, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

An undated photo of the In Amenas gas field in Algeria, where Islamist militants took dozens of foreign hostages on Wednesday.

In a statement on national radio, the communications minister, Mohand Saïd Oublaïd, said that many of the hostages had been freed, but he warned that the military assault was not yet complete and that some captives remained trapped inside the facility.

“The operation resulted in the neutralization of a large number of terrorists and the liberation of a considerable number of hostages,” Mr. Oublaïd said. “Unfortunately, we deplore also the death of some, as well as some who were wounded. We do not have final numbers.”

He also said “the operation is ongoing, given the complexity of the site, to liberate the rest of the hostages and those who are trapped inside.”

The announcement was the most detailed official information given by Algeria on the crisis. It began more than 24 hours earlier when Islamist militants seized the hostages at the internationally managed gas field in the Sahara near the Libyan border, in what they called retaliation for the French military intervention in neighboring Mali. The seizure of the gas field was one of the boldest abductions of foreign workers in recent years.

Unconfirmed news reports earlier on Thursday, quoting a statement reportedly from the hostage takers, said the Algerian military assault had left 35 hostages and 15 kidnappers dead. One Algerian government official called those numbers “exaggerated.”

The communications minister said the military assault force sent to end the gas-field siege had first sought a peaceful end.

“But confronted with the determination of the heavily armed terrorist group, our armed forces were forced to surround the site and fire warning shots,” he said. “In front of the stubborn refusal of these terrorists to heed these warnings and confronted with their evident desire to leave Algeria with the foreign hostages to then use them as a bargaining chip, an assault was launched this Thursday at the end of the morning.”

The minister’s announcement came as foreign governments, including the United States, were seeking clarity on the fate of their citizens trapped inside the gas-field facility. There was no sign that the Algerians had given prior notice to any of the countries whose citizens were among the hostages.

A senior American official said Pentagon aides traveling in London with Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta were struggling to obtain basic information about the Algerian raid, and there were unconfirmed reports that an American Predator drone was monitoring the gas-field site.

The senior official said that perhaps seven to eight Americans were among the hostages — the first official confirmation of the number of Americans held captive — and that he did not know if any had been killed in the rescue operation.

David Cameron, the prime minister of Britain, said through a spokesman that his office had not been told ahead of time, an implicit criticism of the Algerian government. “The Algerians are aware that we would have preferred to have been consulted in advance,” the spokesman said.

Japan expressed even stronger concern, saying Algeria had not only failed to advise of the operation ahead of time, but that Japan had also asked Algeria to halt the operation because it was endangering the hostages.

“We asked Algeria to put human lives first and asked Algeria to strictly refrain,” the chief Cabinet secretary, Yoshihide Suga, quoted Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as telling his Algerian counterpart, Abdelmalek Sellal, by telephone late Thursday.

The situation is “very confused,” President François Hollande of France said at a news conference in Paris and was “evolving hour by hour.” Mr. Hollande confirmed for the first time officially that French citizens were among the captives.

The kidnapping in Algeria was a retaliation for the continuing French military assault on Islamist extremists in Mali that has escalated into a much broader conflict, now enmeshing the United States and other countries with citizens held hostage. Reuters said the survivors of the Algerian assault included hostages from the United States, Belgium, Japan and Britain. The full extent of the casualties was not immediately clear.

News agencies in Algeria and neighboring Mauritania said the helicopters may have attacked when the kidnappers sought to move their hostages from one part of the installation to another.

Adam Nossiter reported from Bamako, and Alan Cowell and Scott Sayare from Paris. Reporting was contributed by Clifford Krauss from Houston, Rick Gladstone from New York, Elisabeth Bumiller and John F. Burns from London, Steven Erlanger from Paris, Hiroko Tabuchi from Tokyo and Clifford Krauss from Houston.

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Deepening Crisis for the Dreamliner

Noboru Tomura/Asahi Shimbun, via Associated Press

An All Nippon Airways flight in Takamatsu, Japan, after an emergency landing on Wednesday.

TOKYO — The two largest Japanese airlines said Wednesday that they would ground their fleets of Boeing 787 aircraft after one operated by All Nippon Airways made an emergency landing in western Japan.

The latest episode elevates the safety concerns about Boeing’s new flagship airliner.

The emergency landing followed a string of problems in the past month with the Boeing 787, known as the Dreamliner, including a battery fire, fuel leaks and a cracked cockpit window. All Nippon said the problems Wednesday involved the same lithium-ion batteries that caught fire last week in Boston on a Dreamliner operated by Japan Airlines.

Last week, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration ordered a comprehensive review of the Dreamliner’s manufacturing and design, with a focus on the plane’s electrical systems. During a news conference last Thursday, the U.S. transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, made no mention of grounding Dreamliners. But if the problems continue, tougher measures could presumably be taken.

Boeing executives declined to comment Wednesday on the Japanese groundings. The company’s shares were down 3.7 percent in afternoon trading Wednesday in New York.

Eight airlines now fly the Dreamliner. All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines in Japan own 24 of the 50 delivered by Boeing since November 2011. The other operators are Air India, Ethiopian Airlines, LAN Airlines of Chile, LOT of Poland, Qatar Airways and United Airlines of the United States. Orders for about 800 additional 787s are in the pipeline.

In the episode in Japan early Wednesday, the 137 passengers and crew members aboard Flight NH692 from Yamaguchi Ube Airport, in western Japan, to Tokyo used emergency slides to leave the aircraft early after battery trouble and an “unusual smell” in the cockpit prompted its pilots to land instead at Takamatsu airport, according to All Nippon. The jet’s main battery in the front of the plane was later found to have become discolored and to be seeping electrolyte fluid, All Nippon said.

Ryosei Nomura, a spokesman for All Nippon, said Wednesday that the airline was temporarily grounding all 17 of its Dreamliners for inspections, leading to the cancellation of 38 domestic and international flights. Japan Airlines also said it would ground the five Dreamliners it was operating; two other aircraft were already undergoing safety checks.

Akihiro Ota, the Japanese transportation minister, said that the emergency landing had raised concerns about the Dreamliner’s safety and that he would dispatch officials to investigate. “I see this as a serious incident which could have led to a serious accident,” Mr. Ota said in Tokyo.

All Nippon and Japan Airlines said the planes would return to the air after safety checks, although it was unclear how soon that might be. All Nippon said it would keep its Dreamliner fleet grounded Thursday, canceling 35 domestic flights and using other types of aircraft for its international routes.

The review by the U.S. aviation administration is unusual, just 15 months after the plane entered service following a lengthy certification process by the agency. That review is in addition to a formal investigation by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board of what caused a battery fire on a Japan Airlines plane that flew to Boston from Tokyo last week.

The safety board said Wednesday it was “currently in the process of gathering information about the B-787 emergency landing in Japan earlier today.”

Boeing has sought to ease concerns about the plane’s design and reliability, and has said it is no more trouble-prone than other new commercial airplane programs.

Updesh Kapur, a spokesman for Qatar Airways, affirmed on Wednesday the airline’s view that the Dreamliner was safe but declined to comment on the decisions by the Japanese carriers. Qatar Airways operates three Dreamliners and has orders and purchase options for 57 more.

Last week, Akbar Al Baker, the Qatar Airways chief executive, played down the recent string of Dreamliner incidents as “teething issues with various components” and expressed confidence that Boeing would resolve any problems. He added that his airline was taking “every precaution” to ensure its fleet was safe to fly.

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Well: Ask Well: Do I Need a Flu Shot if I've Had the Flu?

First, how do you know you had the flu? There are more than 100 viruses that can cause “colds and flu” symptoms — though a bad flu is worse than most of them. Doctors often describe it as “high fever, aches and the feeling that you’ve been hit by a truck.” The country is having an early flu season, plus a big wave of norovirus (sometimes called “stomach flu” or “winter vomiting flu”), plus its worst whooping cough outbreak in 50 years, plus the usual spate of winter colds. Unless a doctor took a nasal swab, you can’t be sure that what you had was flu — and unless it was sent on to a top state laboratory or to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lab for sequencing (which is not routine), even your doctor wouldn’t be able to say for sure exactly which flu virus it was.

Second, even if you had the flu, you presumably had only one strain, which you now have antibodies against. There are at least four strains circulating this year: H3N2, H1N1, and two different B strains. The flu shot contains vaccines against three of them (it only has one of the B’s). By next year, some flu shots will have four vaccines. So a shot would still offer protection against flus you have not had. I suppose your chances of getting flu twice in one season aren’t huge — but some people just get unlucky. And if you have any reason to particularly fear flu, like a depressed immune system, serious obesity or diabetes, or if you are pregnant, you should definitely talk to a medical professional about this.

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Well: Ask Well: Do I Need a Flu Shot if I've Had the Flu?

First, how do you know you had the flu? There are more than 100 viruses that can cause “colds and flu” symptoms — though a bad flu is worse than most of them. Doctors often describe it as “high fever, aches and the feeling that you’ve been hit by a truck.” The country is having an early flu season, plus a big wave of norovirus (sometimes called “stomach flu” or “winter vomiting flu”), plus its worst whooping cough outbreak in 50 years, plus the usual spate of winter colds. Unless a doctor took a nasal swab, you can’t be sure that what you had was flu — and unless it was sent on to a top state laboratory or to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lab for sequencing (which is not routine), even your doctor wouldn’t be able to say for sure exactly which flu virus it was.

Second, even if you had the flu, you presumably had only one strain, which you now have antibodies against. There are at least four strains circulating this year: H3N2, H1N1, and two different B strains. The flu shot contains vaccines against three of them (it only has one of the B’s). By next year, some flu shots will have four vaccines. So a shot would still offer protection against flus you have not had. I suppose your chances of getting flu twice in one season aren’t huge — but some people just get unlucky. And if you have any reason to particularly fear flu, like a depressed immune system, serious obesity or diabetes, or if you are pregnant, you should definitely talk to a medical professional about this.

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E.U. Weighs Requiring Firms to Disclose Data Breaches

BERLIN — To combat a rise in cybercrime, the European Commission is considering a plan to require companies that store data on the Internet — like Microsoft, Apple, Google and I.B.M. — to report the loss or theft of personal information in the 27-nation bloc or risk sanctions and fines.

The proposal, which is being drafted by Neelie Kroes, the European Union’s commissioner for the digital agenda, aims to impose, for the first time, E.U.-wide reporting requirements on companies that run large databases, those used for Internet searches, social networks, e-commerce or cloud services. The proposed directive would supplant a patchwork of national laws in Europe that have made reporting mandatory in Germany and Spain, but voluntary in Britain and Italy.

While European lawmakers are trying to limit cybercrime, the plan by Mrs. Kroes has generated controversy because it would extend the obligation to report data breaches beyond traditional compilers of customer databases — telephone, transport and utility companies.

The technology industry supports the idea of a more systematic approach to the flagging of security breaches, but says the proposal needs more specific guidelines to ensure that notifications are required only when necessary and useful to consumers.

“Harmonization of the notification requirements for security breaches is important and should be addressed,” said Thomas Boué, the government affairs director in Brussels for the Business Software Alliance, whose members include Microsoft, I.B.M., Apple, Oracle and Intel. “More precise guidelines in the directive on the trigger and threshold procedures would make the system more workable.”

Cybercrime has risen sharply in Europe. A series of high-profile hacking attacks on governments and businesses has galvanized European lawmakers to focus on the need to strengthen and harmonize existing laws, which vary widely across the Union and differ on the levels of disclosure required.

In Britain alone, businesses and governments reported 821 cyberattacks in 2011, 15 percent of which resulted in the theft of data on individuals, according to the country’s Information Commissioner’s Office. The attacks represented a more than tenfold increase over the 79 incidents reported in 2007. In one of the breaches, health officials in Scotland reported, the medical records of 104 children had been compromised.

Big companies in Britain are attacked about once a week on average by cybercriminals seeking data, and small businesses are targeted once a month, according to a survey last year of 400 businesses by the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. The cost to the biggest companies of taking the steps necessary to repel an attack and deal with the damage caused by one can reach about £250,000, or $400,000.

Karin Retzer, a lawyer in Brussels who advises businesses on compliance with European data protection laws, said it was hard to say whether European lawmakers would ultimately adopt the rules, the first effort of the kind worldwide.

“We are in a fairly early stage,” said Ms. Retzer, of the firm Morrison & Foerster. “There is a lot of opposition.”

Under E.U. law adopted in 2009, the operators of critical “communications infrastructure” are supposed to follow guidelines on reporting data breaches, but Ms. Retzer said enforcement was spotty at best. Many E.U. countries have applied the mandate only to phone companies, while others have rules on paper for Web businesses but have never enforced them.

Mrs. Kroes, a Dutch economist, made data security a priority when she took over the position of digital agenda commissioner in 2010. Early last year, she drafted the outlines of an E.U.-wide strategy for cybersecurity with Cecilia Malmstrom, the home affairs commissioner, and Catherine Ashton, the E.U.’s representative for foreign policy

The proposal was supposed to be released last September, but now is expected to be reviewed by the European Commission on Jan. 30. According to a copy of the plan seen by the International Herald Tribune, the new reporting requirements would be applied to, among others, the “enablers of Internet services, e-commerce platforms, Internet payment gateways, social networks, search engines, cloud computing services, application stores.”

The proposal directs E.U. countries to impose penalties on organizations that do not heed the notification rules, and requires them to craft national disclosure laws that are “appropriate, effective, proportionate and dissuasive.”

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Deepening Crisis for the Dreamliner

Noboru Tomura/Asahi Shimbun, via Associated Press

An All Nippon Airways flight in Takamatsu, Japan, after an emergency landing on Wednesday.

TOKYO — The two largest Japanese airlines said Wednesday that they would ground their fleets of Boeing 787 aircraft after one operated by All Nippon Airways made an emergency landing in western Japan.

The latest episode elevates the safety concerns about Boeing’s new flagship airliner.

The emergency landing followed a string of problems in the past month with the Boeing 787, known as the Dreamliner, including a battery fire, fuel leaks and a cracked cockpit window. All Nippon said the problems Wednesday involved the same lithium-ion batteries that caught fire last week in Boston on a Dreamliner operated by Japan Airlines.

Last week, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration ordered a comprehensive review of the Dreamliner’s manufacturing and design, with a focus on the plane’s electrical systems. During a news conference last Thursday, the U.S. transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, made no mention of grounding Dreamliners. But if the problems continue, tougher measures could presumably be taken.

Boeing executives declined to comment Wednesday on the Japanese groundings. The company’s shares were down 3.7 percent in afternoon trading Wednesday in New York.

Eight airlines now fly the Dreamliner. All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines in Japan own 24 of the 50 delivered by Boeing since November 2011. The other operators are Air India, Ethiopian Airlines, LAN Airlines of Chile, LOT of Poland, Qatar Airways and United Airlines of the United States. Orders for about 800 additional 787s are in the pipeline.

In the episode in Japan early Wednesday, the 137 passengers and crew members aboard Flight NH692 from Yamaguchi Ube Airport, in western Japan, to Tokyo used emergency slides to leave the aircraft early after battery trouble and an “unusual smell” in the cockpit prompted its pilots to land instead at Takamatsu airport, according to All Nippon. The jet’s main battery in the front of the plane was later found to have become discolored and to be seeping electrolyte fluid, All Nippon said.

Ryosei Nomura, a spokesman for All Nippon, said Wednesday that the airline was temporarily grounding all 17 of its Dreamliners for inspections, leading to the cancellation of 38 domestic and international flights. Japan Airlines also said it would ground the five Dreamliners it was operating; two other aircraft were already undergoing safety checks.

Akihiro Ota, the Japanese transportation minister, said that the emergency landing had raised concerns about the Dreamliner’s safety and that he would dispatch officials to investigate. “I see this as a serious incident which could have led to a serious accident,” Mr. Ota said in Tokyo.

All Nippon and Japan Airlines said the planes would return to the air after safety checks, although it was unclear how soon that might be. All Nippon said it would keep its Dreamliner fleet grounded Thursday, canceling 35 domestic flights and using other types of aircraft for its international routes.

The review by the U.S. aviation administration is unusual, just 15 months after the plane entered service following a lengthy certification process by the agency. That review is in addition to a formal investigation by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board of what caused a battery fire on a Japan Airlines plane that flew to Boston from Tokyo last week.

The safety board said Wednesday it was “currently in the process of gathering information about the B-787 emergency landing in Japan earlier today.”

Boeing has sought to ease concerns about the plane’s design and reliability, and has said it is no more trouble-prone than other new commercial airplane programs.

Updesh Kapur, a spokesman for Qatar Airways, affirmed on Wednesday the airline’s view that the Dreamliner was safe but declined to comment on the decisions by the Japanese carriers. Qatar Airways operates three Dreamliners and has orders and purchase options for 57 more.

Last week, Akbar Al Baker, the Qatar Airways chief executive, played down the recent string of Dreamliner incidents as “teething issues with various components” and expressed confidence that Boeing would resolve any problems. He added that his airline was taking “every precaution” to ensure its fleet was safe to fly.

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Euro Watch: German Economy Shrank in Fourth Quarter

FRANKFURT — The economic stagnation in Europe has taken a significant toll on Germany, with government figures released Tuesday showing that the Continent’s flagship economy contracted in the fourth quarter of last year.

Ina Fassbender/Reuters

A ThyssenKrupp steel plant in Bruckhausen, Germany. Economists expect the German economy to resume growth quickly this year.

The Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden estimated that the German economy shrank about 0.5 percent in the final three months of 2012, compared with the previous three months. The decline was largely the result of sagging investment by German managers worried about the future of the euro zone.

And despite reassurances from economists that growth would bounce back quickly in Germany, the data underlined how closely the country’s fate remained tied to its ailing euro zone allies.

“This idea that Germany is a powerhouse dragging the rest of Europe along with it is a bit of a myth, to be honest,” said Philip Whyte, a senior research fellow at the Center for European Reform in London. “You have a very weak periphery, and a core which is not as strong as everyone seems to believe.”

Throughout the European debt crisis Germany has managed to float above the bad news, enjoying record employment, rock-bottom borrowing costs and export-led growth that kept chugging in spite of the cloud hanging over the euro zone. But Germany’s European partners are also among its biggest customers, leaving it vulnerable to the Continent-wide slowdown made worse by the very austerity policies championed by Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Portugal’s central bank on Tuesday cut its economic forecast for this year, saying the economy would contract more steeply than expected. France has probably missed its target for reducing the budget deficit, according to data published Tuesday, raising the prospects of deeper spending cuts and additional taxes. Meanwhile, elections pending in Italy next month have ground that country’s drive toward economic overhauls to a halt.

“The longer the euro crisis lasts, the more difficult the situation becomes for Germany,” said Stefan Kooths, an economist at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. “We have always said Germany is not a Teflon economy.”

The German government is scheduled to release its report on the economy Wednesday and will forecast growth of 0.5 percent this year, the Handelsblatt newspaper reported, saying it had obtained a copy of the document. In the context of the euro zone as a whole, which is in recession with record unemployment, any growth is considered positive.

But most forecasts are based on the assumption that financial markets will remain calm. If anything were to shake investor confidence in the euro zone, like political turmoil in Italy or Greece, the weak growth rate would mean that Germany would not have much of a cushion against recession.

France is en route to missing its deficit reduction target this year, according to preliminary data released Tuesday by the French government. Although the government aimed for a deficit of 4.5 percent of gross domestic product, data for November suggest the shortfall will be 4.8 percent, ING Bank estimated.

That means the French president, François Hollande, would have to find an additional €5 billion, or $6.7 billion, in revenue to meet the 2013 budget target, and could risk another downgrade of the country’s credit rating.

The data also indicate the challenge of keeping France’s overall level of debt from rising beyond its current level, which is already above 90 percent of G.D.P.

“Today’s figures underline how difficult the task will remain for François Hollande to keep the debt below 100 percent of G.D.P. during his mandate, and France’s rank in the core of the euro zone,” Julien Manceaux, an economist at ING, wrote in a note.

German public finances contrast with those of France. Together, German federal, state and local governments recorded a budget surplus for the year equal to 0.1 percent of G.D.P, the statistical agency in Wiesbaden said. That is the first government surplus since 2007, and it creates leeway for Ms. Merkel to stimulate the economy with public spending if the downturn is worse than expected.

The fiscal strength in Germany underscores the inequities within the euro currency union. Already, the government has been expanding a program that encourages companies to cut worker hours rather than eliminate jobs. The so-called short work program uses government money to compensate employees for some of the wages they lose by putting in fewer hours.

Within the region, Germany has served as a crucial counterweight to the struggling economies of Southern Europe, and helped to stabilize the euro zone as a whole.

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Vital Signs: Nutrition: Vitamin D Doesn’t Reduce Knee Pain

About 27 million people in the United States have osteoarthritis, an incurable condition with few effective treatments beyond pain control. Some observational evidence suggests that vitamin D supplements might slow progression of the disease.

But a two-year randomized placebo-controlled study found that vitamin D did not reduce knee pain or restore cartilage.

In an article published in The Journal of the American Medical Association last week, researchers described a study of 146 men and women with painful knee arthritis who were randomly assigned to take vitamin D supplements or placebos. Vitamin D was given in quantities sufficient to raise blood levels to 36 nanograms per milliliter, a level considered sufficient for good health.

Knee pain decreased slightly in both groups, but there were no differences in the amount of cartilage lost, bone mineral density or joint deterioration as measured by X-rays and M.R.I. scans.

The lead author, Dr. Timothy McAlindon, chief of the division of rheumatology at Tufts Medical Center, said taking vitamin D in higher doses or for longer periods might make a difference, but he’s not hopeful.

“Although there were lots of promising observational data, we find no efficacy of vitamin D for knee osteoarthritis,” he said. “There may be reasons to take vitamin D supplements, but knee osteoarthritis is not one of them.”

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Vital Signs: Nutrition: Vitamin D Doesn’t Reduce Knee Pain

About 27 million people in the United States have osteoarthritis, an incurable condition with few effective treatments beyond pain control. Some observational evidence suggests that vitamin D supplements might slow progression of the disease.

But a two-year randomized placebo-controlled study found that vitamin D did not reduce knee pain or restore cartilage.

In an article published in The Journal of the American Medical Association last week, researchers described a study of 146 men and women with painful knee arthritis who were randomly assigned to take vitamin D supplements or placebos. Vitamin D was given in quantities sufficient to raise blood levels to 36 nanograms per milliliter, a level considered sufficient for good health.

Knee pain decreased slightly in both groups, but there were no differences in the amount of cartilage lost, bone mineral density or joint deterioration as measured by X-rays and M.R.I. scans.

The lead author, Dr. Timothy McAlindon, chief of the division of rheumatology at Tufts Medical Center, said taking vitamin D in higher doses or for longer periods might make a difference, but he’s not hopeful.

“Although there were lots of promising observational data, we find no efficacy of vitamin D for knee osteoarthritis,” he said. “There may be reasons to take vitamin D supplements, but knee osteoarthritis is not one of them.”

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