Acetyl-L-carnitine (levacecarnine) in the treatment of diabetic neuropathy. A long-term, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled study

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial paper looks at L-Carnitine.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 333 patients were involved.

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were teenagers, adults, middle-aged adults and older adults, both men and women.

333 patients meeting clinical and/or neurophysiological criteria for diabetic neuropathy were enrolled.

Patients were randomised to treatment with LAC or placebo.

How the Study Was Run

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

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

Blinding on both sides kept the patients and researchers unaware of who received L-Carnitine.

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the L-Carnitine group a baseline to be compared against.

More than one site took part, so the patients came from several places.

This was a multicentre (n = 20), randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group study.

The effect of treatment on pain was also evaluated by means of a visual analogue scale (VAS).

The greatest changes in NCV (at 12 months) were observed in the sensory sural nerve (7 m/sec in the LAC group vs +1.0 m/sec in the placebo group), sensory ulnar nerve (+2.9 vs +0.1 m/sec, respectively) and motor peroneal nerve (+2.7 vs -0.2 m/sec), whereas the greatest changes in amplitude were recorded in the motor peroneal nerve (+2.2 vs +0.1 mV).

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Acetylcarnitine, Diabetic Neuropathies, Neural Conduction, Pain Measurement and Statistics, Nonparametric.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of L-Carnitine in 333 patients.

With several hundred people or more, it is a fairly large study for this kind of research.

Its findings take up roughly 2 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2002 (Drugs in R&D), a journal based in New Zealand.

More context: the L-Carnitine compound page, all human trials.