Randomised, cross-over, placebo controlled trial of magnesium citrate in the treatment of chronic persistent leg cramps.

What Was Tested

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

Nocturnal leg cramps are common and distressing.

Who Took Part

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

Volunteers suffering regular leg cramps were recruited.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled and crossover study.

Because people in this Cathartics study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

Neither the participants nor the staff measuring them knew who was on Cathartics, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Cathartics could be set against what happens without it.

In the crossover set-up each of the participants took both Cathartics and the comparison in turn, acting as their own control.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Cathartics, Citric Acid, Muscle Cramp, Organometallic Compounds, Sleep Wake Disorders and Trace Elements.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Cathartics.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 8 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2002 (Medical science monitor : international medical journal of experimental and clinical research), a journal based in United States.

More context: all human trials.