Effect of preoperative oral immune-enhancing nutritional supplement on patients at high risk of infection after cardiac surgery: a randomised placebo-controlled trial.

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study, published as a randomized controlled trial.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 50 patients were involved.

PubMed indexes the participants as older adults, both men and women.

In this prospective, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled study, the researchers randomly assigned 50 patients who were scheduled to undergo coronary artery bypass to receive either an oral immune-enhancing nutritional supplement containing L-arginine, omega3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, and yeast RNA (n=25), or a control (n=25) for a minimum of 5 days.

Patients were included if they were aged 70 years or older, or had an ejection fraction of less than 0.4, or were scheduled to undergo mitral valve replacement.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got the intervention named in the title and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

Neither the patients nor the staff measuring them knew who was on the intervention named in the title, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

Some patients received a placebo instead, giving a reference point.

The main outcome was preoperative host defence (delayed-type hypersensitivity response to recall antigens, expression of HLA-DR epitopes on monocytes, and concentration of interleukin 6 in plasma).

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Analysis of Variance, Coronary Artery Bypass, Creatinine, Dietary Supplements, HLA-DR Antigens, Interleukin-6 and Mitral Valve.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study in 50 patients.

Results are reported in around 5 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2001 (Lancet (London, England)), a journal based in England.

More context: all human trials.