Effect of a dietary herbal supplement containing caffeine and ephedra on weight, metabolic rate, and body composition.

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial looks at Caffeine.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 12 subjects taking part.

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

In phase II, these 12 and 28 additional subjects were randomized to a 12-week, double-blind trial comparing C&E (3 times/day) to placebo.

How the Study Was Run

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

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

Blinding on both sides kept the subjects and researchers unaware of who received Caffeine.

Everyone knew when Caffeine was being given (open label), which is simpler to run but leaves more room for expectations to affect what is reported.

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

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Basal Metabolism, Body Composition, Caffeine, Diet, Ephedra, Obesity and Plant Preparations.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and open-label study of Caffeine in 12 subjects.

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.

Its findings take up roughly 8 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2004 (Obesity research), a journal based in United States.

More context: all human trials.