Antioxidant status of young children: response to an antioxidant supplement.

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial looks at Antioxidants.

To study oxidative stress indicators in healthy young children and their response to a commercially available fruit- and vegetable-based antioxidant supplement.

Why It Was Studied

Descriptive statistics, repeated measures analysis of variance, paired t tests, and Pearson r correlations.

Who Took Part

The study group was 39 children.

The age groups tagged for this paper are young children and children, both men and women.

Healthy children were randomly assigned to a placebo and a supplement (commercial antioxidant supplement produced from dried fruit and vegetable extracts and fortified with antioxidants, resembling a gummy-type candy).

Participants were 39 children (26 boys and 13 girls) aged 5 to 10 years.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized and placebo-controlled study.

The children were allocated by chance, so the Antioxidants group and the comparison group should start out alike.

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

Research was conducted at Primary Children's Medical Center and the University of Utah, Salt Lake City.

What Was Measured

Descriptive statistics, repeated measures analysis of variance, paired t tests, and Pearson r correlations.

PubMed files the paper under topics including 8-Hydroxy-2'-Deoxyguanosine, Antioxidants, Breath Tests, Deoxyguanosine, Dietary Supplements, Dinoprost and F2-Isoprostanes.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and placebo-controlled study of Antioxidants in 39 children.

With fewer than 40 people, it is a small study, so it is better read as an early signal for further research than as a settled answer.

Results are reported in around 8 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2002 (Journal of the American Dietetic Association), a journal based in United States.

More context: all human trials.