Influence of short-chain fructo-oligosaccharides (sc-FOS) on absorption of Cu, Zn, and Se in healthy postmenopausal women.

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Oligosaccharides and Copper, published as a randomized controlled trial.

This study was carried out to evaluate the effect of short-chain fructooligosaccharides (sc-FOS) on the absorption of Cu, Zn, and Se among postmenopausal women who are potential candidates to subclinical trace element deficiencies.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 11 women were involved.

PubMed indexes the participants as middle-aged adults and older adults, women only.

11 postmenopausal women aged 53-70 y, not taking hormone replacement therapy were enrolled and completed the study.

How the Study Was Run

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

Because people in this Oligosaccharides 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 women and researchers unaware of who received Oligosaccharides.

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

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

A randomized double blind cross-over study.

This study was carried out at the Human Nutrition Research Center, Clermont-Ferrand, France.

Stools were collected for the next 5-7 days.

Isotopes were determined by ICP-MS (Cu and Zn) or GC-MS (Se).

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Biological Availability, Copper, Feces, Intestinal Absorption, Isotope Labeling, Nutritional Requirements and Oligosaccharides.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Oligosaccharides and Copper in 11 women.

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 5 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2005 (Journal of the American College of Nutrition), a journal based in United States.

More context: all human trials.