Evaluation of cranberry supplement for reduction of urinary tract infections in individuals with neurogenic bladders secondary to spinal cord injury. A prospective, double-blinded, placebo-controlled, crossover study.

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial looks at Plant Preparations.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 21 individuals taking part.

PubMed tags the participants as both men and women.

How the Study Was Run

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

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Plant Preparations and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

Neither the individuals nor the staff measuring them knew who was on Plant Preparations, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

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

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

A prospective, double-blinded, placebo-controlled, crossover study.

21 individuals with neurogenic bladders secondary to SCI.

Data were analyzed using the Ezzet and Whitehead's random effect approach.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Colony Count, Microbial, Hydrogen-Ion Concentration, Leukocyte Count, Phytotherapy, Plant Preparations, Spinal Cord Injuries and Treatment Failure.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Plant Preparations in 21 individuals.

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 5 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2004 (The journal of spinal cord medicine), a journal based in England.

More context: all human trials.