Comparison of ease of swallowing of dietary supplement products for age-related eye disease.

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial looks at the intervention named in the title.

To examine patients' perceptions on the relative importance of the physical characteristics and appearance of dietary supplements, and to evaluate two supplements with the same combination of vitamins and minerals used in the Age-Related Eye Disease Study (AREDS) with respect to ease of swallowing and other features in elderly patients.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 50 patients taking part.

The age groups tagged for this paper are middle-aged adults, older adults and people over 80, both men and women.

A single-site, single-visit, crossover design, subject-masked comparison of two dietary supplements (ICaps AREDS Formula--Alcon; Ocuvite PreserVision-Bausch & Lomb).

50 patients aged 50 years or older.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized and crossover.

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

Each person switched between the intervention named in the title and the comparison at some point, usually with a gap in between.

Patients ranked the importance of eight physical characteristics of a vitamin tablet or capsule (ease of swallowing, size, shape, color, smell, coating, texture, and taste) irrespective of the test products used in the study and then took both test products randomly and were asked to indicate which product they preferred based on the same eight characteristics.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Capsules, Color, Deglutition, Dietary Supplements, Macular Degeneration, Patient Satisfaction and Tablets.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and crossover study in 50 patients.

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 2004 (Journal of the American Pharmacists Association : JAPhA), a journal based in United States.

More context: all human trials.