Safety and efficacy of NT, an herbal supplement, in treating human obesity.

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Appetite Depressants, published as a randomized controlled trial.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 24 women taking part.

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

A total of 24 healthy women, 18-60 years, body mass index 25-35 kg/m(2) on no chronic medication were randomized to four groups of six: (1) oral freeze-dried NT 6 gm/day, (2) bed-dried NT 6 gm/day, (3) freeze-dried NT 12 gm/day or (4) placebo.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized, placebo-controlled and pilot.

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

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

It is described as a pilot, a small early test of whether a larger Appetite Depressants study would be practical.

Food intake was measured at baseline and 4 weeks.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Anthraquinones, Appetite Depressants, Body Mass Index, Dietary Supplements, Drugs, Chinese Herbal, Eating and Freeze Drying.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, placebo-controlled and pilot study of Appetite Depressants in 24 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.

Results are reported in around 6 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2006 (International journal of obesity (2005)), a journal based in England.

More context: all human trials.