L-Carnitine supplementation reduces oxidized LDL cholesterol in patients with diabetes

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of L-Carnitine, published as a randomized controlled trial.

Patients with type 2 diabetes are under high oxidative stress, and levels of hyperglycemia correlate strongly with levels of LDL oxidation.

Carnitine favorably modulates oxidative stress.

Who Took Part

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

Eighty-one patients with diabetes were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 treatment groups for 3 mo.

The following variables were assessed at baseline, after washout, and at 1, 2, and 3 mo of treatment: body mass index, fasting plasma glucose, glycosylated hemoglobin, total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, triglycerides, apolipoprotein A1, apolipoprotein B-100, oxidized LDL cholesterol, thiobarbituric acid-reactive substances, and conjugated dienes.

How the Study Was Run

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

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

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

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

What Was Measured

Patients with type 2 diabetes are under high oxidative stress, and levels of hyperglycemia correlate strongly with levels of LDL oxidation.

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Apolipoprotein A-I, Apolipoprotein B-100, Blood Glucose, Body Mass Index, Carnitine, Cholesterol and Cholesterol, HDL.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, placebo-controlled and crossover study of L-Carnitine.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 2 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2009 (The American journal of clinical nutrition), a journal based in United States.

More context: the L-Carnitine compound page, all human trials.